Spike Lee: Blackness has Many Meanings
Spike Lee: Blackness has Many Meanings Presently in America a war is being fought. Forget about guns, planes, and bombs, the weapons from now on will be the newspapers, magazines, TV shows, radio, and FILM. The right has gotten BOLD, bolstered by their squashing of Ice-T's COP KILLER, any piece of art that doesn't hold the party line is subject to attack. It's war on the battle grounds of culture. The presence, or lack thereof, of a realistic portrayal of African-Americans in American films is a pertinent issue. Hollywood has a tendency to stereotype, or, completely ignore, African-Americans in the feature films it produces. Historical films typically have their African-American presence in the form of an illiterate slave, or inferior character, who is usually brutalized, raped, mistrusted, stupid, violent, or violated in some way. In the blockbuster, Forrest Gump, Forrest's friend, Bubba is "as nearly as much of an idiot as Gump himself"(Pfeil, 258). The film version of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic, The Scarlet Letter, infuses an African American slave character into the "loosely adapted" script, and then proceeds to depict her with the negative stereotypical characteristics that we unf
stereotypical, sexist images of both black and white women emerge in the movie- they are either virgin or whores, madonnas or prostitutes. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. Contrary to the previous statement, one could view these scenes as a vividly entertaining, as well as a true part of Malcolm's life that was worth showing in order to contrast it with his transformation. She is the epitome of acceptance into white America. She is mute, helpless at the hands of her masters, and raped. In his attempt to counter these false images, director, writer, and producer, Spike Lee, has been successful in drawing huge audiences into theaters with his original style of filmmaking. It begins with the character Smiley, a man in the neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, a part of Brooklyn, who has cerebral palsy. "The police frequently inflict violence on minorities because they know that they will be protected by their superiors, and that they are not likely to suffer as a result. (Smith, 101) Spike's epic, Malcolm X, is entertaining and extremely informative, carrying the message of a great leader to a mass audience who may have never bothered to read about the life of Malcolm X at all. "(Du Bois, 3) On the one hand, there is a promise of economic opportunity in America; on the other hand, this same system fails to grant equal access to this socioeconomic structure, which leads to resentment of the conservative values of white America. "Because of racial segregation, a significant share of Black America is condemned to experience a social environment where poverty and joblessness are the norm, where a majority of children are born out of wedlock, where most families are on welfare, where educational failure prevails, and where social and physical deterioration abound. However, he turns on Sal (and white capitalistic society), in the end by throwing a trash can through the pizzeria's window, causing the riot that destroys the store. "(Reed, 3) To understand Malcolm X, his impact, and why he had so many followers, is to better understand the ground breaking Civil Rights movement, and, more importantly, the deep rooted sense of racism that affected America immensely during his time, and, sadly, that still exists today. This sentimental feeling is just an escape from realizing that Bed-Stuy, a predominately black neighborhood, is the only place his business could thrive, because there is too much competition in his own neighborhood, Bensonhurst.
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Acceptance Essays
