A Spike In My Side

"Yo, what do you wanna live in a black neighborhood for anyway, man? Motherfuck gentrification!
- Buggin Out

Yes that quote is from Do The Right Thing. Why you ask? I love movies because I love to be entertained and invested into a story. I admire everyone who brings talant and craft to good movies. Most of all the directors. I often read up on these directors and learn how they mastered their work.

One such example, and incidentally the subject of this blog, is controversial and revered director Spike Lee. Here is a man who took to heart the sufferings of the African American culture. A man who saw racism being ignored and showed it to the ignorant. A man who has created intelligent, funny, dramatic and cheerfully vulgur films that more often than not stare social issues in the face. This all sounds great. I thought so. Thing about Spike Lee is he is very touchy.

Maybe having such a well placed knowledge of racism has driven him paranoid and now he believes that any sign of a race issue in the words of anyone other than him is racist in some way.

I started thinking about this when I read up on Lee's views of two of my favorite directors: Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino.

1. Spike believes that Quentin Tarantino secretly craves a black heritage made evident by the writer director's constant use of the word "nigger" in his movies, mostly by white guys and by Tarantino himself at one darkly comedic point in Pulp Fiction ("Storing dead niggers ain't my fuckin' business!"). Lee didn't notice that the people using the word were thieves and killers and I believe the word's use was simply to further punctuate that these are very vulgur bad guys who don't give a shit one way or another. In the "dead nigger storage scene" Tarantino's character was clearly good friends with Samuel L. Jackson's character and was speaking out of anger I think anyone could understand. The stories take place in Los Angeles, where Rodney King was smashed up on the road and people are known for being stereotypical and racist. Tarantino is also a well known fan of the blaxploitation genre and loves the movie "Coffy" so the fact that this childhood fascination made its way into the director's work is no real surprise. Often I think of Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino as cinematic brothers seeing as how their films seem alike in dialogue, style, humour and characters. Bottom line: calm down Spike.

2. Spike stated his anger toward Clint Eastwood for "completely ignoring" the depiction of black US soldiers in his World War II film Flags of Our Fathers. Claiming even further he didn't see a single black soldier in that movie and that Eastwood is racist. Guess what Spike, I saw several black soldiers in that movie. In fact they are shown in a close up. Maybe you need new glasses. Eastwood was not directing Miracle At St. Anna he was directing Flags of Our Fathers about the men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. I'm sorry Spike but these men were white. And yes I was sure horrified by Eastwood as Dirty Harry when the first criminals he killed in the movie turned out to be a gang of black thieves, even if the main villain was a psychotic white man. No I wasn't, because I can tell the difference between Dirty Harry and real life. Also the fact that Eastwood directed the movie Bird, a Charlie Parker biopic, which starred Forest Whitaker and a cast full of African American actors. Oh but I'm sure this was a ploy. Perhaps Eastwood's latest film Gran Torino was a big "Fuck you" towards Spike. Perhaps not. While Eastwood portrays himself as a man who is partial to racial slurs and jokes but does not hesitate to hang out with an Italian barber or bond with an Asian family. I can see Spike growlling "you beat me to it you old bastard" when learning that Eastwood's next project is a Nelson Mandela biopic starring Morgan Freeman. The next bottom line, calm the fuck down Spike.

I don't mean to say this to a guy I like and admire. But it's true, he is a bit stereotypical. You aren't racist or you wouldn't keep hiring John Turturro or even your own criticised Quentin Tarantino. I don't care how fuckin' epic Malcolm X was. I don't care if Inside Man destroyed a blockbuster like Ocean's Eleven. I don't care if you didn't agree with Charlton Heston either. I don't give a shit if we both praised Barack Obama. It doesn't excuse your frustrating behavior. Clint said to you before and I'll say it to you again, sometimes you need to "shut your face." Still, I more or less get what you are trying to say any other time. I conclude that while different not only in color we are both still "struggling men trying to keep our dicks hard in a cruel and harsh world." Your words not mine.

This has been a poor rant by Your Modest Guru. Thanks for reading.