A Spectral View over the Ideological Aspects of O. Stone’s and S. Lee’s Work

/, Gallery, Blesok no. 19/A Spectral View over the Ideological Aspects of O. Stone’s and S. Lee’s Work

A Spectral View over the Ideological Aspects of O. Stone’s and S. Lee’s Work

Spike Lee

Despite Oliver Stone, who, starting from his liberal attitudes, leads the fight with the establishment and the dominant ideology individually, basing his films on one main character, strong and male, Spike Lee appears as a portparole of the afro-american community. That’s why there are plenty of characters in his films that functions as an antic chorus. Spike Lee is an outstanding black author who in all his films treats the black people problems and use only afro-american actors. As Stone, even when Lee deals with topics which are not directly connected with the Afro-american community he uses eighter black acters in the leading role (as in “Girl 6”) or, again, on a more common level touches the black aspects (as in “He got the game” that despite being a sport movie, treats the basketball where Afro-americans dominate and shows subtile relations which are on their social level racially motivated).

Portparole

We said, Spike Lee, even he disclaim it, concidering himself as an ordinary filmmaker, is portparole of the afroamerican community. That is why he makes documentaries on a many hot political issues (as the four black girls’ massacre in the 60s) shoots video clips for typical black band and singers (Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley). Even his production studio is named after an deeply black idiom “40 acres and a mule”, the portion that every black slave shoud have been given after the liberation, as an (unfullfilled) promice by the famous american president Abraham Lincoln. Dispite this Spike Lee is constantly present in the media (TV, radio, internet), on seminars, public debates, press conferrences, where he gives his oppinion on different racial questions.
Spike Lee always derives from markantly black position but in his films he always treat different topics and problems of black reality. So, in the film “Do the right thing” he gives picture of a typical black neighbourhood, “Jungle fever” talks about interracial love affairs, “Crooklyn” is a black family drama, “The Clockers” deals with the black criminal underground, “Malkolm X” is a life saga about the famous black leader, “Get on bus” treats the biggest black political event in the recent years-Milion Man March, “He got game” is about the problems of the young black sportists.

Multiculturalism

Despite the thematic richness in his huge opus, there are several specific ideological aspects that can be summed up as a constancy in his films.
At first, it is, already seen by others, the view over black community, not as an monolithical, abstract, we could say good for political manipulation, phenomenon, but a dinamic, polymorphic, full of contradictions.
Lee shows that the black community has the same atributes as the white one, or any other one. It comes from his basic ideological attitude: If something is not by anything different from something else, than there is no reason to be discriminated or treated specifically.
That’s why the Spike Lee “whole” consists of “everything”. It is drastically shown in get on bus where there is no question actual for Afroamericans that is not included in the film. So, among the twelve people on bus there are radical racists, people with moderate attitudes, mongrels, chauvinists, baptists, homosexuals, moslems, traditionalists, criminals, murderers, drunkers even Republicans (toward who the black community is traditionally ignorant). And the sequence where the positions of the democrats and republicans towards the Afroamerican are debated is the politically most provocative one, but also very lucid in the scene with two girls at the parking, the refusal of women to participate in the MMM is also thematized and by what the feminist’s position is touched. Even more the bus driver is white, actually Jew, that makes the category wnite also deconstructed and interminority (non)solidarity also criticized.
We can distinguish three groups of characters in the racial surrounding given by Spike Lee: ones which holds firmly on their racial identity, they show it everywhere. They do not mix and do not respect the other identity, attitude most vividly expressed through the sentence “Stay black” in “Do the right thing”; the others that are passive about their racial identity, like Jay or Lordmayor in the same film; and the third which are aware of their racial identity but that does not bother them to be friends with the others, as are Mooky and Vito.
We have said Spike Lee insist on a multicultural dediferentiation, on inclusion and deconstruction on all the microidentities with an outstanding irony. In “Do the right thing” Afroamericans assault a white boy persuading him to go back to Massachaussets (white racial stereotype) and he respond them that he was born in Brooklyn. Spike Lee rarely gives a classical WASP American. They are eighter Italians, Jews or Puertoricans.

Agaist the racial stereotypes

So Spike Lee’s attitudes are not typically racist, he always speak from a decentered position. That is why his films are full of contadictions about the racial stereotypes. We have mentioned the contadiction about the category “white”, even “black”. Especially where the Jews are in question, who are also very active in the field of human rights and their ethno-religious emancipation.
The sexist stereotype given in “Girl 6” is also problematical. There, a young black girl working in the phone sex industry, the “hot” lines, must introduce herself as a white or hispano-american but also as a blondie with big breasts, or as a blackhaired girl with sensual lips. There is an interesting scene in “Do the right thing” when the black boy Radio Raheem (belongs to the first group “stay black” characters) buying batteries from the Koreans’ market place himself in a superior position by comanding them to speak English. Or where the white (Italian) Pino (belongs also to the first group) has havorite idols that are black (the basketball player Michael Jordan, the singer Prince, the actor Eddie Murphy) and he cannot stand being with blacks. And he tries to justify himself saying that his idols “are not so black”. And this is a classical diagnosys of racism and chauvinism where the concrete individuals are estimated, especially the famous, but the common notion is what is hated, the group, the colectivity.
The most detailed view over over the racial stereotypes are given in “Jungle fever” where we face different cross-ethnic and cross-racial relations through what the racial stereotupes fall down. There are situations where the love affairs out of mariage are not treated negatively if they are within the race and when they are among different races both the blacs and whites are strongly against.

Contradictions

There are two contradictions that critics find in Spike Lee’s art. The first is senzationalism and the second is the patriarchality.
The senzationalism or “the non-resistence towards bombastic retorics” is maybe most autoreferentialy given in in the film “Do the right thing” where Mooky (ironically Lee has the role) although he belongs to the group which is against the racial stereotypes and he mixes with peple out of his race (his girlfriend is Puertorican), in the critical moment of the racial dispute he stands first on the barricades and starts the racial violence, the demolition of Italian Sal’s Pizza. There are examples of a non-resistance toward the racial radicalism, both in the films and in his statesments on different occasions. Seems that it is the price that has to be paid by anyone pretending to be a portparole.
The second contradiction is even more unusual. The famous american feminist bell hooks in her analisys of “Crooklyn” finds under Lee’s racial noncomformity a sexist conformity. In the movie, for Lee is completely unproblematic that one little girl is taking over the “woman” role in the family when her mother becomes very ill instead of her elder brothers or father. We can see that sexism also in the wellknown poorness of his female characters and their role of statist in the male world. He tries to escape from that position in the two short sequences in “Get on bus” where the white girl disapprove her boyfriend’s participation in MMM and on the parking where two black girls protest against the fact that women movement is not included in the organization of MMM.

Rich visual form

All these, small million, hot, issues, topics, and other aspects, on the racial problematics (with equal amount of social dimension would be immposible to watch without the rich visuality that Spike Lee possesss. We must admit that he is not an artisan for naration. All his films have linear plot. But he is brilliantly familiar with the different genre discourses that he applies according to the topics of the film. His films have the same polichromatic colour where the red and the orange dominates.They have the same directing tricks but they are always shot in different genres. “Get on bus” is perfect match between fiction and documentary. “The Clockers” has good action sequences, “Crooklyn” is wonderful family drama, and the neighbourhoodish “Dothe right thing” with it’s narrrow muse en scene is close to TV play. In “Girl 6” the exterieurs and interieurs are functioning nicely in the mood of Holywood B production.
SpikeLee uses many twisted cadres, unusual angles for shooting, slow motion, camera acrobations, editing gigs, by what he makes the veristic plot unusual.
He is master for details and subtle retorics through details (graffiti with racial messages, important news headlines, make up details contrast in the clothing (Mooky wears T-shirt with the name of black basketball player Robinson, while the white boy has one of Larry Bird). The music has special place in his films. As Oliver Stone, Spike Lee uses the music to give ideological odour to the plot, to build the context as a sociocultural idiom or the time aspect of the film or it is used to create the rhytm or with the various costumes (on a microlevel) and with the complete iconography he paints the various socio-cultural and the ideological levels in his multicultural world.

The rainbow coalition

Film is the most popular artistic medium today esspecially in the U.S.A. where it has a special social dimension. That’s why the dominant WASP ideology, politics, culture and tradition has created Hollywood and keeps that myth alive. Through it the artistic techniques, topics, worldview are being uniformed, the differences are being diminished and stereotypes are being produced. Even when hot issues are on stake they are filmed through previously defined and politically correct cannons, of course, as in politics Holywood has created many values through what it enables the various aesthetic and ideological views to be channalized, through the independent production and schools but they cannot take off the Holywood primate, neighter as a medium nor politically. Because of this, it is very important that there are several authors in Holywood, that have the adequate attention and which are dealing from within subversively. That is why, despite all the contadictions directors like Quentin Tarantino in the field of aesthetic cannons, Martin Scorcese in the social patologies, Oliver Stone from political and Spike Lee from racial aspect are of great importance for the film world and esspecially for the wider social context. Whether they act from an individual position or as a tribal shammans they are a big deposit in the micropolitical fight (in Lyotad’s term) against the cemented Master WASP ideology and culture in America.

AuthorRobert Alagjozovski
2018-08-21T17:23:47+00:00 February 1st, 2001|Categories: Reviews, Gallery, Blesok no. 19|0 Comments