By Jerry PDX
Monday, August 20, 2018 at 10:19:00 AM EDT
I remember watching Spike Lee's first movie, She's Gotta Have It (1987).
The critics had been lauding it as some kind of mini-masterpiece. It wasn't that great, but it wasn't bad either, a decent low-budget movie that was moderately entertaining. The critics response to it pretty much summed up the pattern they would follow in his career. They fall all over themselves to praise to high heaven every "race message" movie he makes, in order to state to the world, "See, we love this black director, that makes us cool with the black man."
The worst example of that was Do the Right Thing (1989). It didn't even have the moderate entertainment level of She's Gotta Have It.
It was dull, leaden, derivative and pretentious. Basically, a piece of crap as cinema, but the critics were hailing it like it was Citizen Kane (1941).
I recall those two virtue signaling twits, Siskel and Ebert, calling it one of the greatest movies ever made, but those two were always posing and posturing as noble anti-racists.
Lee did better with Malcom X and Jungle Fever; they were reasonably entertaining but his race baiting and usual self-indulgences kept them from being better.
I don't consider Spike Lee a hack as a movie maker, clearly there are worse directors in Hollywood (Michael Bay?), but his innate and ingrained racism, plus the irrational belief he is better than he is, and not recognized as such by racist whites, makes his work insufferable and keeps his movies from taking a step upward in quality.
The one movie he made that I think came close to greatness was School Daze (1988); it's the one Spike Lee movie I can say I absolutely loved. It was a tremendous satire of college campus life with excellent musical and dance entertainment. What separated it from his other movies is that it addressed the issue of racism among blacks toward each other, instead of supposed racism from whites. Free of Lee's usual pretensions and persecution complex suggestions he just made a wildly entertaining and fascinating movie.
What's really funny about School Daze was the reaction of white critics. It's the first movie he made that they didn't like. Clearly the phony poseurs were uncomfortable with Spike shining a light on racism between blacks and without his usual condemnation of whitey. They didn't feel comfortable with praising it, so they had to find fault. If you've never seen School Daze, watch it, it's the only movie by him I heartily recommend.
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2 comments:
How there possibly be a whitey critic of Mr. Lee? Not fair. NO whitey could fairly judge a negro film maker.
jerry pdx
Out of curiosity I did a little research on School Daze and found it scores a Metacritic rating of between 3.0 to 5.0, on various sites. It appears that time hasn't softened the white critics much on this one, they still feel the need to dislike Spike Lee's one truly fine movie because it isn't filled with Spike's usual anti white propaganda which doesn't make them feel like guilty white liberals, a feeling they must have in order to feel validated in some way. However, I discovered a review by Roger Ebert who softened his view of the movie over time, to his credit he did acknowledge that it was a good movie after initially giving it a harsh review. Do the Right Thing on the other hand consistently scores 8.0 to 10 on the Metacritic ratings, with one site giving it "Universal Acclaim".
That his best movie and his worst movie have such lopsided critical ratings contrary to their actual quality is indicative of how powerful the need to "not seem racist" influence people across generations. New and old critics, for the most part, worship DTRT but then consider "School Daze" one of his "weaker" efforts (quote from a snide review I read).
There was a local film critic who wrote for Willamette Week magazine for about a decade, his name was DK Holm and I always enjoyed his highly intelligent, offbeat and sometimes politically edged movie reviews. He despised Spike Lee, called his movies an insult to moviemaking. I thought he was a little too harsh but understood that partly he was satirizing the lemming like praise most other reviewers heaped on Spike Lee. He's one of the few critics who didn't like Do The Right Thing and gave it a scathing review suggesting that PC ideology was the reason critics loved it so much. He was absolutely right of course. Interestingly (or coincidentally?), he was fired by Willamette Week shortly after that review appeared. He wrote about his firing later on in a column in his next job and suggested the firing was politically motivated, that WW wanted to be more mainstream and his movie reviews were just too eccentric. I have no doubt he was right. Gives you an insight as to another reason why critics are so quick to heap praise black film makers. They damn well better if they want to keep their gigs.
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