Why Spike Lee Is Evil...

[mike j]

re spike & 'do the right thing':

sounds like you're accusing spike of being pissed off.
well to quote a p.e. sample - "i got a right to be
pissed off man, my people been persecuted!" say what
you want about the garbage can going through sal's
pizza, he got a dialogue going.

i remember at the time, one of the big debates was
over Spike's depiction of a black community (Bed-Stuy)
without crack cocaine which was then at epidemic
proportions in these neighborhoods. basically the
white media was saying "why don't you show how fucked
up your people are?" an interesting thing to think
about in the historical context of the film, trying to
crucifying the man for portraying his neighborhood and
culture in a positive light.

not to mention ernest dickerson's needing to reinvent
the cinematographic wheel to get those gorgeous black
faces to show up like they should. i'm tellin ya,
dissing those movies you're taking ALOT for granted.


re public enemy:

um, what can i say, chuck and flava and the bomb squad
(hank shocklee especially, that guy is sooo amazing)
made in my opinion two of the best rap albums ever
('yo!' and 'nation of millions'). 'disposable heroes'?
you have to be kiddin' -  one miss wonders. they
almost seemed like a club band as i remember it. 

judging music by its politics is like judging fiction
by its,er, 'signifiers'. when i saw p.e. in nyc 1989
(the 'terrordome' single had just come out), a friend
of mine was so scared he waited near the exit just in
case those uzi's went off!! 

silly rabbit.



>>>>>>>>>

Mike J,
I agree with you on two points: first, House Party
rules; second, I'll give 
Spike (Mr. Lee) credit for She's Gotta Have It, his
only film that isn't 
heavy-handed and overly melodramatic (the soundtrack
is also quite good). 
However, I've always thought that 'Do The Right Thing'
was one of the most 
overrated films of the 80s. I think he's guilty of
recycling the peaceful 
reform / violent resistance binary of MLK and X, as if
either of these 
options could be transferred to 1980s America and
still result in some sort 
of tangible results; in other words, I'm accusing
Spike of being utterly 
ahistorical and of using comfortable sound-byte
ideologies that are either 
outdated or, at the very least, need to be fine-tuned
as conditions change. 
His politics, in short, are horribly convoluted; this
is why he can make an 
utterly horrible film decrying the NBA--He Got
Game--yet still act as a 
spokesman for Nike, heap praises on that idiot Michael
Jordan, and make sure 
that the cameras catch his image at every Knick game.
And don't get me 
started on Public Enemy, the feature group on Do The
Right Thing's 
soundtrack. They've also built their reputation by
spewing out black power 
slogans from the 60s while offering nothing new to the
discourse. If this is 
all America has to say about race, then I'm afraid
America's doomed. W.E.B. 
DuBois could produce more profound insight vis. a bout
of flatulence than 
Spike Lee and John Singleton combined.
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at
http://www.hotmail.com.


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/