.

The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed.

Foucault begins his lecture describing the importance of space. In his eyes our experience of the world is that of a network which connects points and elements. Although the net or the network is more than ever a metaphor of contemporary times, this idea of space already has been discussed in the 1960s. Foucault was associated with the structuralist movement in those times and he defines Structuralism as the effort to create an ensemble of relations between single elements which have been spread out in time and space to make them appear as connected, contrasted and implicated by each other. In the broadest sense this is what Foucault aims on by discussing about “other spaces”: The space we live in today, in which our time and history occurs, is heterogeneous. We do not live in a kind of void in which we can place individuals and things, moreover we live in a set of relations which define places or sites. These sites are not connected to each other and can not be combined. But among these sites, Foucault is interested in certain ones. Namely sites or places which have the strange property of being in relation with all other sites, but in a way that they neutralize or inverse relations the other sites happen to reflect. That means spaces which are linked with all others but which contradict all other sites. Of these spaces are two main types: utopias and heterotopias.

Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.

But how can heterotopias be described? What meaning do they have? To answer these questions, in order to analyse heterotopias, Foucault gives six principles.

1. Almost every culture in the world has made its own heterotopias. There is no certain universal heterotopia norm. But they can be classed into two main categories: First are the heterotopias of crisis. They are privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society, in a state of crisis: menstruating or pregnant women, the elderly, etc. But these heterotopias of crisis are disappearing today and are being replaced by the second category: The heterotopias of deviation. Places like rest rooms, psychiatric hospitals and prisons.
2. In one society, any existing heterotopia can be practised in different ways in certain historical periods, for example cemeteries. “Consequently cemeteries lost their function as holy and immortal centre of the city and became the other city.”
3. Heterotopias can combine several spaces, which actually can never be together. Thus it is that the theatre brings onto the stage, one after the other, a whole series of places that are foreign to one another.
4. The fourth principle is related to time and the first examples given by Foucault are the museum and the library, which are heterotopias of collected time. The past is reduced to a representation organized as display of artefacts (books, paintings, relicts, etc.) and the will to enclose in one place all times, all epochs, all forms. The idea of constituting a place of all times that is itself outside of all times, belongs to our modernity.
5. A heterotopic space is not a freely entering place as public spaces. Either there is an obligatory entering as for prisons, or individuals have to submit to rites or purifications for religious or hygienic reasons.
6. This principle concerns singular spaces within some given social spaces whose functions are different or even the opposite of others. To Foucault some 17^th century puritan societies in America are the most extreme example of other spaces, a realized utopia, a very strict planned settlement that symbolizes the sign of Christianity and a mechanized order of communal life.

The reason why I introduce Foucault’s concept of heterotopias into the topic “Worlds of image” is to bring this concept to contemporary times especially in the context of the text “Anime, from Akira to Princess Mononoke” by Susan J. Napier and an interesting theory within the discussion of this text: The expansion of anime (utopia) into the real world. The city started to copy the structure of virtual sites of the internet, which creates a new, unprecedented city. At this point would be to discuss, whether the internet, the cyberspace is an utopia (which it rationally is) or an heterotopia, which also could be possible because the cyberspace does have certain rules and logics as well as borders and limits. Thus there is the creation of a new type of heterotopia: It is the mixture, the joint experience between utopia and heterotopia. Also Foucault described such a mixture: The mirror. Because the mirror is an utopia, since it is a placeless place. “In the mirror, I see myself where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space (…).” But the mirror also is a heterotopia, since it really exists. It makes the place that I occupy, at the moment when I look at myself in the glass absolutely real, it is the reflection of something really existing: utopia and heterotopia. In contemporary times not only the mirror confuses the distinction of utopia and heterotopia and moreover the distinction between the usual “places” and the “other spaces” in the sense of Foucault. These contradictions fade away in the context of the cyberspaced world.

Here is a video, to bring the point home! –MP

Week 2: She’s Gotta Have It & Jungle Fever – Narrative

Week 3: Do the Right Thing & Clockers – Character

Week 4: Crooklyn & Get on the Bus – Setting

Week 5: Bamboozled & He Got Game – Cinematography

Week 6: Malcolm X & 25^th Hour – Editing

Week 7: School Daze & Mo’ Better Blues – Sound

Week 8: When the Levees Broke & If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise – Documentary

The students in my class would start off watching Inside Man because I would want them to start with something familiar, and Inside Man is the closest to a blockbuster that Spike Lee has ever made. By starting with what seems familiar, the students feel comfortable because many of them are probably used to films like this. From there, I would progress by having the students watch two films a week, but with the focus of each week being based on a certain aspect of filmmaking in general. For example, week 7 would be focused on sound in film. That week, the students would watch School Daze and Mo’ Better Blues, as different kinds of sound are prominent throughout those films, like in their music scenes (Good and Bad Hair, the band playing at the club, and so on). Through this, the students will learn the basics of these filmmaking techniques, but also how Spike Lee uses them to create his signature style.

Thus, I think it is interesting for Lee to depict women as drug abusers in Clockers, and to do so in the form of a montage. As Rodney says to Strike the scene before, he has the “world’s greatest product”, proven by the fact that he will never run out of customers as long as there are people addicted to drugs. The montage serves to depict a critical aspect of the plot: there will always be people buying drugs, thus Rodney will never go out of business, thus he will always have the power he wields over those in the projects. For Lee to make those drug abusers women, however, makes an interesting argument about the power dynamics in these situations. There are a couple of men who use drugs in Clockers, but the montage scene of multiple women coming to buy drugs from Strike’s crew seems to make a connection between the two. This is added to by the fact that there are no female drug dealers in the movie. Whenever drugs are placed in relation to women in the movie, the drugs, and thus the men, have power over the women. He does not restrict his depiction to a certain woman, either: women of all sizes and colors are coming to the projects to stay high. Each woman is jittery, gaunt, and anxious to receive her drugs. Regardless of their appearance, however, it is clear that they are hooked, and tied to the male drug dealers for every hit. The men of the projects, even as their own lives are falling apart, still have control over their faithful female customers.

This is juxtaposed with the depiction of mothers in the film as being incredibly powerful and respected. Even for a hardened drug dealer like Strike, Tyrone’s mother getting in his face prompts some angry words and disrespectful language, but he does not lay his hands on her even as she physically abuses him. With the oppositional inclusion of both depictions of women in the film, I find that Lee gives a much more varied perspective on the possible roles that women in this situation can fulfill than he has in other movies. Strike and Vic’s mother and Tyrone’s mother are critical players in the way that their son’s problems with the police turn out, and the drug abusing women are critical players in the way that the economy of the projects continues to run. This is made clear by the fact that there is a montage of women, as opposed to one or two, thus giving it the necessary weight and importance to be on par with the importance of the mothers in the film. It is true that white teens from Connecticut also fuel the drug trade in this particular project, but those kids are naive and easily found out. In order for the block to economically sustain itself, in order for Rodney to continue to maintain his hold over the “world’s greatest product”, it is important for there to be a constant stream of regular drug abusers–in this case, that is the role that women must serve.

Every time I watch Do the Right Thing I’m reminded again of what an eye Spike lee has for geometry and the good it does for the visual tenor of his films. All movies abide by some sort of geometry. They have to, given the parameters inherent in the rectangular format of film strips, camera sensors, and television/cinema screens. Set in relation to the rectangle therefore, everything projected or displayed responds geometrically to the boundaries of the screen. Though the most common recognition of this condition of the medium comes in the form of the infamous and often underdeveloped rule of thirds rule, which generally holds that images make the most aesthetic sense when their subject of interest appears 1/3 of the way into the frame, either from the top or from the bottom. Like diagonal lines that lead the eye, bold colors that parse contrast, or forms that generally complement one another, the rule of thirds speaks generally, rather than objectively to the way we look at (and have been trained to look at) photographic images.

Spike Lee knows and appreciates such nuances in many of his films, but his execution of and transgression of this rule comes across so clearly in Do The Right Thing, that I think it deserves some attention here. After a quick once-through, I’ve included below some screenshots that I hope will illustrate some of the geometric genius I’m talking about:

By completely transgressing the rule of thirds and putting Buggin’ Out front, center, large, and from below, mouth agape, Lee underscore, highlights, outlines, and stars Buggin’ Out’s outrage.

The first term is what Jafa calls this “notion of treatment,” which refers to Jafa’s proposition of how we might begin to more adequately assess films made by black filmmakers. Jafa speaks of black films as a “space of treatment rather than [as a] space of material.” (xxv). Jafa reasons that “when we were brought to the Americas as slaves we were generally seen as material ourselves. You don’t really have the leeway to go out and select your own materials. So a lot of our creativity coalesced around the notion of treatment, that is, transforming in some meaningful fashion given materials.” (12) To understand Jafa’s argument, and extrapolate it through time a bit (remember, he’s discussing critical treatments of Oscar Micheaux’s films from the silent era and the 1940s), we might think about some of our conversations around Spike Lee and his films’ relationship between aesthetics and narrative. Certainly, we noticed a difference narratively between She’s Gotta Have It and Do the Right Thing, but what about the difference between, say, Mo’ Better Blues and Red Hook Summer? One of the most visceral things about either of these films, in my opinion, are the overtness of their aesthetic tone: the color saturation and aural foregrounding in Mo’ Better versus Lee’s obvious (some argued distracting) reliance on the  iPad in Red Hook. I think that Jafa’s notion of treatment simultaneously makes that distinction easier to make and opens up further avenues of critical inquiry once we’ve done so. Which is not to say the the material production of Lee’s films is not an important way into them, but rather the opposite–we should think of his films’ material instantiation as a way into Lee’s films explicitly for the way such considerations allow us to talk about these films in their entirety.

Jafa’s second notion is something he calls the “alien familiar.” As he discusses Oscar Micheaux’s filmography, which I will risk  and say was widely panned for a degradation in quality that critics attribute to flagging genius, insufficient funds, and lack of time. To explain Jafa’s “alien familiar,” I’d like to just quote him at length a few times, because I think there’s something significant in his voice and the way he expresses what it means for one’s work to take on this quality.

J. Hoberman points out, in a classical piece on Micheaux and Ed Woods, that if Micheaux was, as some have claimed, the baddest filmmaker of all time, then what’s remarkable is that over a thirty-year career he got badder and badder. (14)

When they asked Armstrong what he thought of bebop, which was really just an extension of what he had started to do–a more pronounced conclusion, he said that it was ‘Chinese music.’ Now it’s up to us to interpret what he meant. On a certain level its clearly intended as an insult. But what he was really speaking to when he said ‘Chinese’ is it seeming Orientalism, its ‘alienness.’ Now Armstrong’s music was the apotheosis of one of the most radical artistic breakthroughs of the century, so in essence he’s saying, ‘Look, I’m out, and this shit is too way out for me, so as far as I’m concerned, its some Oriental, some non-Western shit.’ But his work epitomizes this kind of alienness, so I don’t think people have to necessarily articulate their work in the same terms in which we discuss it. (17)

I want my films to get worse and worse the farther I go on. The work should be less and less like film, and more and more like things. It’s like having somebody draw you a picture; they turn it around and it is what it is. I want it to have something my friends and I call ‘the alien familiar.’ (18)

The alien familiar, in my opinion would really have served many of our conversations well if we had gone into Spike Lee’s more commercially successful films, which I don’t think get badder and badder over time, so much as further and further (in some ways) from his early work. Really, I think that the longer Lee’s career goes on, the more we can see how sophisticated his return to certain themes are.

It would be interesting to see how Spike would engage the notion the creation of prison communities and how the Drug laws were used as the stimulus for prison communities placed on the backs of the poor. It obviously could not be a film with mostly black actors because this problem isn’t limited to the black community, but it would still require a Spike Lee ability on the part of the director to highlight the various perspectives on a problem while at the same time presenting his own.

I posted a trailer to an incredible documentary called “The House I Live In” on the subject, but overall it would be interesting to see the topic in narrative form.http://http://youtu.be/a0atL1HSwi8

I cannot think of an adequate set of adjectives to describe the scene in 4 Little Girls where Lee interviews George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama. Shock would be one adjective, momentary confusion another (only until I figured out the actual relationship between Wallace and Ed), pity yet another. I would consider this scene to be incredibly poignant–this is the part of every great tale where the powerful man on top (not the same as the hero) has lost his power, and is fumbling around to recreate a sense of reality and worth. It is like being in the South, but this time in antebellum Mississippi, in Faulkner‘s world of Absalom, Absalom! (that’s an interesting comparison to Spike Lee) where Wallace is Thomas Sutpen, and Ed is Wash Jones, and Sutpen is scrambling to recreate his legacy but is killed in the process. The difference here, though, is that Ed must play the part of Wallace’s “Black friend”–Jones has no such obligation to Sutpen, and rightfully so. Much scholarship is being and has been done on the role that Black people have played in the identity creation of white people, and this situation is no different. Instead of literally rebuilding his image by recreating a family, as Sutpen attempts to do with Jones’ granddaughter, Wallace rebuilds his image on the back of his caretaker, Ed. It is clear that Ed understands the dynamics of the situation–I recognize his unwillingness to look directly at anything and his quick shuffle out of the frame as my body language whenever I find myself in the situation of being the “Black friend”. Nevertheless, his feelings about the situation take a backseat to Wallace’s desperate need for Black bodies in proximity to him to make him look like a better and more caring person.

George Wallace Interview

Wallace’s desperation and age are what make this scene so poignant. I know that one of the main goals for this class is to study how Lee uses different cinematic techniques to evoke different reactions, but what strikes me is the fact that the scene is so unscripted. Lee’s hand is visible in some places–the closeup shots of Wallace smoking a cigar and the grainy darkness of his office add to the feel of the scene as depicting something/someone seedy and untrustworthy. However, Wallace’s body language speaks to his desperation; he is fidgety, constantly touching his face or someone’s arm or looking around the room uncomfortably, and also stutters when he is speaking. This is only worsened/heightened by the forced entrance of his caretaker. During the time the documentary chronicles I cannot imagine one could have gotten Wallace to admit to having a close personal relationship with a Black man, let alone fabricate such a relationship, let alone such a relationship with his helper. What I appreciate about Lee’s documentaries is that they make reality seem hyper-real, but not to the point that it loses touch with reality. This is the feeling that I get when watching this scene. Wallace’s desperation to seem like a good person who cares about Black people and Black education is so real that it is almost beyond real, but it remains shockingly and pitifully real.

Link to a clip of the interview from Critical Commons here.

The performative nature of femininity takes front stage in the training session. Lil tells the women they must become their caller’s friend, they are the “ones who listen,” and they are the “ones who appreciates them and doesn’t judge them.” These are all stereotypical qualities one expects of a spouse, and more specifically a wife.  Being a good wife is closely tied to being feminine. But even though this is a role women are expected to fall into, here is a group of women being told this is the role they must play. They are training to be “better” versions of women. This highlights that fact that femininity is a learned behavior even for women.

The characters the women take on point to the sexual attitudes associated with femininity. There is the dominatrix, the mistress, and the girl-next-door, each with their own name and look. The women’s sexuality is submissive to that of their callers. Not in that their characters are innately sexually submissive, because some aren’t, but that the women only voice the characters requested by their callers. This is a business transaction; the ability of the women to change to whatever the caller wants makes for a happy caller and a return customer. However, this also highlights the stereotype that women must be/ should be sexual submissive to their partner and that a good woman knows how to please. Conversely, women who are vocal in their desires, both sexually and non-sexual, are stereotyped as bitchy, aggressive or even manly.

The operators must act out this role of the perfect woman, which seems like a weak one,  as her success as a woman (femininity) is measured only in how she can please a man (sexually and emotionally). However, having this relationship based around a phone sex line subverts this idea. The operators create these realistic fantasies and while all these men are having sex, the women are only working. They read books and draw pictures while on the lines and the sexual requests of their callers become office jokes. The women actually have a lot of power as they are the ones who control the sexually fulfillment of their male callers with a level of cool calculation and detachment (with the exception being Judy). This closely ties to the class discussions about femininity in School Daze and how female power came from self-objectification. By making their bodies the target of the male gaze, women were able to control that gaze. By becoming these characters the operators have some form of power, they have access to a side of their callers few people get to see and through this access control them in a very physical way.

Even as femininity is shown as performance, Lee still reinforces the idea of inherently female acts. First, there are no male operators. Even as the operators create people out of thin air, it is still seen as something only women can do.  Only woman can become the sexual objects of men, even when they are pretending. This links to another point, the callers are nearly all male. The only female caller is Christina who only joins in a call at the insistence of her husband. If all the operators are women because all the callers are men, this makes an assumption about femininity (and also masculinity); that it is always heterosexual.  Finally, if all of the callers are men then no women are calling, suggesting that phone sex is not something women would engage in as customers. This seems to be a judgement on the type of sexuality women should or would engage in.

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I would hope that through engaging first-hand with the same medium, it would, as I say give them a deeper appreciation for the work that goes into making a film. It’s not just that I want them to necessarily respect Lee as an auteur, though they should at least respect his work, I want them to get a more realistic idea of what goes into making a film, what resources like time, energy, and (wo)man power are used in the creation of a movie. By doing this, it would potentially help them understand what it meant for Lee to make the filmic choices he did or what was at stake in his deciding to make one particular choice over another. Through this hands-on form of learning, I would hope that they would be able to engage on a deeper level with the technical aspects of Lee’s filmmaking, and through this engagement, they could better engage with the ideas he conveyed as well. That being said, I would have this be a final project so they would have the entire body of work we covered to choose from.

As evidenced through Jane’s character, with her blonde fake hair and blue contacts, Lee posits that any desire and attempt towards a white standard of beauty results in a deflated, inferior, and non-existant female voice. Jane’s womanhood is quited throughout the film as she transitions from a role of being a desired  commodity to becoming nothing more than an object to the men. It’s also important to realize that Lee shows the Wannabees in the same physical space being ignored.

Jane’s dismissal and Muteness; Jane is seen only in the background as the MEN talk

However, the clearest example of Lee vehemently rejecting white feminine ideals as a marker of black beauty, femininity, and womanhood is depicted when Jane is given to Half-Pint. Jane’s sexual mistreatment by the fraternity brothers serves as Lee’s belittlement of Jane as a marker of desired black womanhood. The fact that Jane is literally “raped” (which is synonymous with the word “degradation”) with none of the other males contesting her treatment further shows the “degrading” nature of placing white womanhood and ideals of femininity as synonymous to black ones as problematic. Julian’s abuse of Jane is also Lee’s commentary of refusal of white womanhood as depicted through a black woman.

Jane and Rachel’s Sexuality

Lee also advances Rachel as an example of a “respectable” black woman by his contrasting displays of Rachel and Dap’s romantic encounter as compared to Jane and Julian’s. Rachel is depicted with restraint, gentleness, and admiration from Dap’s eyes can clearly be seen. Their encounter is private, as evidenced by the darker lighting and covers, and the audience’s gaze is never fully on the private union of Dap and Rachel. Conversely, Jane and Julian’s encounter takes place in brighter lighting and the audience gets a full-fledged viewing of Julian’s lust for Jane. In other words, Jane is put on display for gazing.

Characterized by romance and privacy

Public Viewing and Lust

Conclusions
In the context of School Daze, Lee does have commentary on black womanhood. In his eyes, physical markers such as hair and skin complexion notably define black womanhood. However, this becomes problematic because it supposes that black womanhood is solely connected to a black man’s preferences and a woman’s physical attributes. Therefore, in this regard black womanhood befalls the same issues that womanhood typically does in that it becomes solely defined by a male’s gaze.

–       Summer of Sam (1999)

–       Red Hook Summer (2012) Themes: Private/Public space, ownership, neighborhoods/geographic politics, insiderism/outsiderism, violence, community, nostalgia, affiliation/filiation –       School Daze (1988)-       Jungle Fever (1991)

–       She’s Gotta Have It (1986)

–       She Hate Me (2004) Themes: depictions of femininity, sexism, sexuality, insiderism/outsiderism, sound, color, erotic/desire, gender, love/lust, freedom to want –       Black is…Black Ain’t (1994)-       Girl 6 (1996)

–       Get on the Bus (1996)

–       Tongues Untied (1989) Themes: Blackness and the world, what does it mean to “be black”?, compression, masculinity/femininity, love, unity, affect/effect, sexuality, politicization of desire –       Mo’ Better Blues (1990)-       Crooklyn (1994) Themes: family, class, Lee’s bourgeoisie idealism, masculinity/femininity, domesticity, girlhood → womanhood –       Huey P. Newton (2001)-       4 Little Girls (1997) Themes: The Biography vs. Fictional film, private/public, closure, story-telling, documentary, the process of movie-making –       Malcolm X (1992)-       Inside Man (2006) Themes: Epic/Biopic, sound, Americanness, conservative/radical, racism, justice, history, socioeconomic class, how do we remember heroes?/what makes a hero? –       When the Levees Broke-       If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise Themes: troubling the idea of “structural racism”, representation, intertextuality, individual vs. community, what does it mean to exist in a system?                     Wrap Up Week         ———Discussion————–

I would have students watching around two movies a week so they could compare/contrast the two films. For the first two weeks, I would focus on community as it is revealed through affiliation/filiation. I would look at the role of violence and how that impacts the notions of belonging to a particular place, as well as the politics that come with living in a particular area: what concerns the residents exclusively? What can/can’t we connect with because of this exclusivity? What role does this exclusivity play in our greater understanding of the movie and its message? For weeks three and four I would look at Lee’s treatment of women and their sexuality. Once more, looking at insiderism/outsiderism to help us figure out what these lines determine. I would also have the class look at desire and the way the difference between love and lust functions: do we judge the characters for choosing one over another? Do we even care? Should we? Weeks five and six would continue with the politicization of desire and looking at Riggs’s films as bookends, we could continue the conversation of marginalized groups within minority groups and what it means to give them a voice. Here we can trouble the notions of masculinity/femininity and what’s at stake in cedeing to one or another. We can also look at the idea of love, and start to explode the concepts of “Blackness” out onto a greater, national level. We would shrink down a little bit in weeks seven and eight when we look at domesticity and gender roles within the home, but we would continue focusing on the movement from girlhood to womanhood and the impact that has on the home and on the children. We would also be asking ourselves what does Lee’s own upbringing and penchant for the black middle class have to do with his filmic decisions. By weeks nine and ten we would be reprising the ideas of public/private, but this time looking at their impact on story-telling and on Lee’s documentary process. Weeks eleven and twelve would focus on the making of a biopic and the ways in which it differs from a typical narrative film both in feel and in scope. We would look at the making of history and heroism; how are heroes agreed upon and what makes villains? What role does socioeconomic class play in determining good and evil, and how can we tell the difference? Weeks thirteen and fourteen would look at Lee’s documentary films about Katrina and its aftermath to continue looking at his work on a broad level. We would look at the complex notion of structural racism and the way in which Lee’s project grows in scope from “Levees” to “If God is Willing”. Hopefully, by ending on this grand scale, we can gain an appreciation for the depth and intensity with which Lee engages in his projects and challenges us to engage in as well.

01:10:15

A hallmark of Lee’s films is the “Dolly Shot”, which we’ve explored in various films of his. A poignant use of this technique is in the movie “X” appearing at 01:1015, it takes place as Malcolm X enters The Audubon Ballroom for the last time. Prior to this scene, we see X talking with his wife on the phone, discussing his plans for tomorrow. Towards the end of the conversation, he looks up to the lampshade, noticing a bug on the inside and lets his wife and listeners know that he’s aware many people are after him. At this point in the film, X is aware that there is a bounty on his head and as he drives to the venue, his impassive, dejected face makes it clear to the audience as well. Through the use of the dolly shot, Lee brings to screen the phrase “dead man walking” in a very palpable way. X seems to float ethereally underneath the naked tree branches and steel gray sky. His expression is unreadable and it’s difficult to tell if there’s only sadness or a set determination to persevere; one feels hard pressed to assume it’s either/or. Acting as Malcolm X, Denzel Washington keeps his face at eye level, making us look up at him, emphasizing how little we can empathize with his situation, although we might feel sympathy for him. By using this shot, Lee makes X both unreachable and unaccessible.

01:26:24

In the film “Inside Man”, the dolly shot is employed at 01:26:24, after Detective Frazier witnesses the murder of a hostage after his failed attempts to mediate with the bank robbers. It’s been made clear early on in the movie that Frazier’s career is on the line after a check cashing scandal and he and his partner Detective Mitchell are excited for a chance to redeem themselves. There’s also the personal guilt Frazier feels for having jeopardized the safety of the hostages with having all the responsibility be on his shoulders. When Lee employs the dolly shot in this movie, Frazier floats along, face lit alternately by street lights and the cops’ working lights, but he’s mainly in darkness. His eyes stare vacantly, determinedly as he’s preparing to confront the lead robber and while there’s plenty of chaos around him, he seems eerily unmoved by it all.

“Inside Man” is different from “X” in that Frazier’s life isn’t actually on the line. Initially, his career is in danger and his life is threatened when he tells the robber to shoot him because he feels he has nothing left to lose, but he’s not about to speak for the last time in front of a room full of people or have his last sights be his wife crying over his bullet-ridden body. The oppressive darkness of the scene parallels the confusion that most of the characters seem to be operating within, unsure of what to do, when to do it, and what they’re even doing it for. Denzel Washington acts in both, but with different outcomes: in “X”, Washington conveys the idea that he is a man who has passively accepted death, but in “Inside Man”, he’s a man about to look death in the face. Frazier has no idea what to do next, while X knows there’s only one thing he can do. There’s no older woman to throw a kind “God bless you!” Frazier’s way, he cannot be stopped, but just walks through the fray, unperturbed and undeterred.

Troy’s Evolving Womanhood (through hairstyles)
1.

Troy’s hair in braids (womanhood mimics mother)

2.

Troy getting straight hair (old conceptions of femininity and womanhood)

3.

Troy with an afro (destined womanhood)

Jungle Fever and the Tragic Mulatta
In Jungle Fever, Flipper, a successful architect with an attractive light-skinned wife, Drew, and daughter begins an affair with his white secretary. In a scene following Drew’s realization of Flipper’s cheating, a private conversation between black woman regarding interracial relationships and gender norms offers insight into the complicated nature of black womanhood. In conversation with her girlfriend’s, Flipper’s wife Drew expresses, “My marriage is wrecked. It’s fucked up. My man is gone. He is fucking some white bitch and I still believe there’s good Black men out there.” This comment shows Drew’s need to be loved by a man which ultimately means her commitment to marking her value is in relation to a man’s actions. Although the reason for Drew’s thought process is not explained, it seems like the black women in the conversation believe that the supply of black men is very limited and thus black women have to take what they can before black men run out. Thus Drew’s desperation and lack of self-worth may be explained in that regard. One could also say what happens to Drew is reminiscent of the classic mulatto tragedy in which the mulatto becomes a victim of the society they live in, a society divided by race, and always meets a tragic end.
On first viewing it may seem that Spike Lee provides competing dialogues regarding black womanhood. However, upon careful examination it seems like Spike Lee has a unified conception of what black womanhood looks like, it is the image of a strong, independent, natural haired, darker complexioned woman. For instance, in both Crooklyn and Jungle Fever, the lighter skinned and “good haired” women are always associated with traditional conceptions of womanhood. Although, society desires the lighter skinned individuals (reminiscent of Jane in School Daze), Lee rejects this idea and depicts this type of woman as either stuck in a limited gendered capacity (Aunt Song) or ultimately undesirable and deserted (Flipper’s cheating on Drew with Angela). It is also important to note that Lee further remarks on the decreased self-worth and womanhood of the light skinned/good haired women by illustrating Drew’s lack of strong will and independence (characteristics of black womanhood) by her momentary “forgiveness” towards Flipper when she takes him back in a moment of lust and passion (which one could say she ultimately realizes because she is crying throughout the sexual scene).

Someone in class made a comment about being able to forget about the existence of minorities in the worlds of films with predominantly white casts, and though Spike Lee’s films have predominantly black casts and follow predominantly black characters, he does not allow us to forget about the other groups.  Instead, he provides us with a complete picture that mirrors our own existence in the worlds he creates through his films.  It crossed my mind that maybe you can’t tokenize a character in a film about minorities, but I’d like to think it has something to do with the way Spike Lee builds his characters, rather than more internalized racism that continues to grow in our society. 

I proposed in class that Lee focused more on power plays than anything else, and for a lot of his films, such as School Daze, Mo’ Better Blues, and Red Hook Summer, this is true.  The film does not actively focus on a problem that arises specifically because of race.  They do make appearances, but they are not central to the film.  The one film we did not pay much attention to, and that I neglected in my evaluation, was Do the Right Thing, wherein power is quite explicitly derived from cultural status.

I have heard it said that racism originally arose as a means to justify the horrors of slavery.  If this statement is true, then racism and power are inherently linked as one entity, and thus we must view Lee’s films as implicitly about power and race simultaneously.  The statement above indicates that racial separation was originally created as a means of enforcing a power differential, and thus addressing the power plays addresses the history of those relations.

Watching this happen on a much larger scale and seeing the police, the state’s institution for the application of force required to uphold the law, used to so clearly deny hundreds their right to speak horrifies me.  Quite frankly, it shows that in America, it is okay to step on people’s rights and the inalienable rights our founders believed in so long as it is in the pursuit of profit.  I remember from my AP economics course, my teacher stating that ‘economics is an amoral field.’  Sure, it has no moral compass, but the lack of moral compass means it’s incredibly easy to do immoral and unethical things.

And then saunters onto stage British Petroleum and their Deep Water Horizons debacle.  BP destroyed thousands of lives and caused one of the greatest ecological disasters in the history of mankind, and because they are a corporation they will only suffer a fine that covers a fraction of the cost of cleanup.  I think that Brad Pitt only barely scratched the surface when he stated that ‘I used to be against the death penalty, but now I think it needs to come back.’  I didn’t read this as a death penalty for people, but a death penalty for corporations.  At the moment, corporations exist as an alternative, higher-class citizen.  They do not pay the same taxes, are not subject to the same legal restrictions, and do not experience the same legal penalties that an actual human being does.  They are also immortal, provided they are not financially mismanaged.  Romney was so adamant ‘corporations are people too, my friend.’  Really?  Seems like he was prettying up the truth: corporations are people, everyone else is a slave.

And this leads me to wonder, what would a corporate execution look like?  Say, for instance, that America did not have this higher-class paper person, and that when a corporation was found guilty of criminal negligence it was assigned a jail term.  It would not be allowed to conduct business for the duration of its incarceration.  But since it’s a paper person and there is nothing that can be imprisoned, the only viable way to ensure the corporations assets were not used for profit during the period of incarceration would be to occupy them.  Or, apply a 100% income tax to the corporation for the duration of its incarceration.  Sure, it’ll be able to conduct business, but the stockholders won’t see any profit from it.  The corporation would have to be legally restricted from changing its name, and face seizure of assets in the event that it attempted to use tax havens to evade the penalties.  But the ultimate penalty, a full-blown corporate execution, would require the federal government to seize control of all that corporation’s assets and auction them off, as well as prohibit the formation of a new corporation by the officers and executives of the current one.

I’m sure I’ve bored you with this rant on corporations, but to me this is America’s class divisions evolving and threatening the very fabric of the society and dream we hold so dear, and I firmly believe there needs to be a change to prevent America from turning into a state where corporations act with free reign akin to feudal lords.