In Defense of Spike Lee (was Re: Not Pynchon related (Summer of Sam))

[davemarc]

I'm looking forward to seeing Summer of Sam.  Even if I didn't admire Spike
Lee's filmmaking, any movie that David Berkowitz "condemns" would be of
great interest to me.  My heart goes out to the families of Berkowitz's
victims, but I doubt that calling for a boycott of the film actually does
them any good.  

As far as the issue of Lee not getting things "right" about
Italian-Americans or any other ethnic group is concerned, I've never looked
to his films (other than, perhaps, his documentary "Four Little Girls") for
"realism."  He calls his productions "joints" and consistently uses ethnic
caricatures and other distortions of reality for hallucinatory,
expressionistic, sometimes surrealistic, purposes.  

Perhaps School Daze, with the interpolated musical numbers and caricatures
of college students, is Lee's most Pynchonian (or Farinesque) flick.  But
"Four Little Girls" is a powerful critique of racism in Birmingham that
compares well with Pynchon's essay on Watts.  

d.