Jungle Fever! She’s Gotta Have It.

April 24th, 2008 · No Comments · life in black and white

Don’t let the title fool you. No, this isn’t some dish-all blog about interracial relationships…. for the most part. BUT, this can be your history lesson for the day.

Lee’s Ladies: A Critical Analysis

The history of blacks and American film spans the course of over 100 years. Ranging from the blatant, stereotypically bamboozling roles depicted in the early 20^th century to the modernized, glamorized, yet marginalized stories told about African Americans today, many motion pictures depicting blacks spawn both controversy and conversation.

One of the most integral and important figures at the center of such discourse is Spike Lee, one of American’s most influential mainstream black filmmaker. This unlikely director has a reputation as never being afraid to air dirty laundry, breaking down racial barriers, and challenging societal prejudicial paradigms in regard to every issue pertaining to black culture in America.

Lee has been called everything from “marketer, provocateur, propagandist, genius, racist, humorist, writer, actor, director, producer, pitchman, chauvinist, homophone, hoop fan, hype artist, egotist, entrepreneur, caricaturist, visionary, radical and reactionary” (Breskin, 149).

His films have been produced with the intention of addressing numerous social and political issues, always about blacks. Whether it attends to female sexuality, intra-racial prejudices, interracial relationships and miscegenation, or the simple longing for people of one’s kind to be represented and recognized in an iconic neighborhood business, Lee’s productions always are intended to break the mold and get audiences thinking—as a start.

While Lee doesn’t necessarily offer solutions, his main focus is to get people thinking about the problems and becoming aware of the realities of life. Through analyzing and comparing a controversial theme in his movies—namely, the portrayal of black women—one can see that Lee’s take-no-prisoners attitude toward tackling sticky subjects has changed the perception and portrayal of black life in America.

Shelton Jackson Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1957 to a schoolteacher mother who called him Spike, and bass player father. He grew up in middle-class Brooklyn, where most of his movies would be set in the future. Growing up closely with his sister, Joie, and brothers, Cinque and David, both of Spike’s siblings would end up working closely with him in the majority of his films, as well as his father. Joie has appeared in nine of Lee’s films, and David is Spike’s set photographer. Their father, jazz musician and composer Bill Lee, scored the music for the majority of his son’s movies.

Spike Lee graduated from Morehouse College and went on to study at New York University’s film school. In those years he wrote and directed such short films as 1977′s Last Hustle in Brooklyn, 1980′s The Answer, and 1981′s Sarah, a lovey, romantic short he made for his grandmother. His thesis project at NYU was a one-hour film called Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.

After school, he actively and quickly worked hard to take his career to the next level. In the summer of 1984, his dreams were crushed when the film he worked so hard on, The Messenger, was dropped due to lack of funding. This blow to the ego left hundreds of people in his cast and crew disappointed and screwed without jobs as they had put in much effort and preparation in devotion to that firm. Lee, who was frustrated and discouraged (especially at his loss of over $50,000), but all the more motivated and determined.

He got his break when the film She’s Gotta Have It (1986) finally launched Lee’s career. With a budget of merely $175,000, Lee shot his independently produced film in 12 days with a cast of unknown actresses and actors. The self-described, “unformulaic” film was a hit and a huge success, even though it was largely due to Lee’s scrapping around for money and doing many of the promotion for the film at the grassroots level himself. Lee literally “flipped the script” of his debut film’s potential, as She’s Gotta Have It grossed about $8 million and set the stage for much larger budgets for Lee’s future flicks.

Telling the story of Nola Darling, played by Tracy Camila Johns, the film opens with a reading of the beginning of Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel by Zora Neale Hurston:

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

Coupling that different black art medium with still black-and-white photos of black life, crediting Lee’s Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks, and rolling “A Spike Lee Joint” across the screen lent a hand to the originality, creativity and personalization of even just the start of the movie.

The opening credits fade into the opening scene where the leading lady, nude in her bed, sits up mid-lovemaking and declares to the audience that the film is about her sex life. Knowing exactly who she is, what she wants from men, and how to get it, Lee’s character demonstrates from the start that she is an easy, breezy, liberated black woman. The fact that the movie is filmed in black-and-white gives it the French film noir classy ambience to it.

She’s Gotta Have It goes on to tell the story of Darling’s separate relationships with three men and a woman. These relationships consisted of only sex (assumed because that was all that was shown in the movie—no dates, dinners, nor movies). Darling’s lesbian lover, Opal Gilstrap (played by Raye Dowell), was a bit marginalized as a character, but the real decision Darling had to make was choosing between her three male suitors.

Player one is Jamie Overstreet (Tommy Redmond Hicks), the man in bed with Darling in the opening credits of the movie. Bossy but bland, he is more of the conservative type with idealistic hopes for what he wants his woman to be. Reconciling that with Darling’s strong, independently fierce personality proved to be a point of major conflict.

Player two is Mars Blackmon (played by Spike Lee himself), a young, wisecracking guy who doesn’t take himself seriously (because nobody does…) but knows he wants Darling’s body.

Player three is Greer Childs (John Canada Terrell), an uppity, superficial pretty boy who drives a Jaguar and detests Brooklyn (McMillan, 27). The various levels of chemistry between Darling and her significant others, and the tension between the sig-os themselves are key to the plot development and entertainment.

Many of Lee’s critics say that She’s Gotta Have It is misogynistic and sexist. The character of Nora Darling could be interpreted as a nymphomaniac slut who juggles multiple partners.

“Spike Lee…obviously doesn’t feel any reluctance about feeding derogatory stereotypes about the supposedly sex-crazed Black woman (in fact, he seems to delight in thumbing his nose at such racist ideas),” (Iverem 14) according to Esther Iverem, author of We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006. The fact that Iverem starts discussing black film with She’s Gotta Have It indicates the truly revolutionary nature of Lee’s movie.

The movie is truly about power and control—the unusual or uncomfortable part about it is that the woman is the seductress and the “typical” role had been switched. In her analysis of the movie, Terry McMillan says:

“In this case, it was a black woman…Hollywood is notorious for having males in leading roles with some kind of outside love “interests.” And even when a male character is dealing with more than one woman, he is never referred to or viewed as a freak but as a sexually imaginative, sexually active, or sexually aggressive man. Men in general have gone through their little black books on Friday nights and gone through the entire alphabet until they can get a woman to come over…They are also good at planning many of their seductions well in advance. It was refreshing to see a black woman doing the same thing” (McMillan, 27).

She goes on to praise the film, glad to see a female character calling the shots and having the men play by her rules; not waiting by the phone for a man to call, nor saying she ever wants a long-term boyfriend or husband.

“The other thing that fascinated me was how Spike Lee managed to show how wimpy men can be when it comes to a woman,” she writes. “They can be just as stupid as we can, although women have traditionally been shown as vulnerable and weak.” Darling is pressured to finally make a decision, and after a highly criticized, rough sex scene between her and Overstreet, she realizes that she does care about him.

In Inner Views, David Breskin interviews several American filmmakers. When asking Lee to respond to black feminist Michelle Wallace’s (and other women’s) criticism of She’s Gotta Have It: “the film is about a black woman who couldn’t get enough of the old phallus and who therefore had to be raped,” Lee says,

“There would be a section of black women who would think that I was saying that all black women were like this, therefore I’m just reinforcing the stereotype that black women are loose…That scene is not a stamp of approval of rape. Hopefully, it was my intent to show how horrible it is…I don’t think she decides she loves him because of the rape. When you’re dealing with that many people, you are always judging—each person up against the other. She felt that he was the one that cared about her the most…We made [the movie] like it was going to be out last film. So we put everything in there” (Breskin, 166-7).

In Lee’s 1988 musically-based film School Daze, a rape functions as the culmination of the film as well. A story about the phenomena of intra-racism and color stratification, it is set in a southern black college during homecoming weekend.

This film, with four main rival groups: Da Naturals, the Gamma Rays, Da Fellas, and Gamma Phi Gamma. School Daze addresses such issues as light- and dark-skinned conflict, “good” and “bad” hair, career aspirations versus social activism, and a host of class and moral issues.

Lee plays out much of the drama between the women in this film—the brown-skinned, textured-haired, working-class Jiggaboos (a derogatory term akin to “coons” or “sambos”) — “Da Naturals,” versus the light-skinned, weave-toting, colored-contact wearing Wannabes (blacks who “want to be white”)—”the Gamma Rays” (Iverem, 18).

The contesting groups play out their conflicts in humorous and entertaining song and dance numbers such as “Straight and Nappy,” but as stated above, the movie offers no practical solution or answer for the problem.

The movie changes tone suddenly at the end of the film, taking place in hazy yellow light with stretched images and slowed-down movement. The entire school goes to the quad of the college, and it is implied that the main actor “has become aware of his ability to change.” The camera ascends, and the two main male characters (who had once been on opposing sides) say, “Please, wake up” (Bambara, 55). In regard to the abrupt change of mentality, Lee said that the ending was surreal. “Some people felt [it] didn’t work, but it worked for me and that’s why it’s in” (Breskin, 167).

Critics claimed that the film wasn’t so much a critique of sexism and color-consciousness as it was a display of it, and Lee responded in Inner Views:

The whole film is about the petty, superficial differences that keep black people from being a more unified people. And we’re using the black college campus as a microcosm of black society as a whole…using the metaphor of light being the truth and saying, “Look, we got to stop this dumb, ignorant shit we’re doing”…It was showing how stupid it is. (Breskin, 167-8).

With Lee’s 1990 film Mo’ Better Blues, once again female characters are central in the plot; this time juxtaposing “the standard nurturing (browner) Good Woman versus the career-driven, sexier (lighter) Bad Woman” (Bogle, 350), respectively Indigo (Joie Lee) and Clarke (Cynda Williams).

Mo’ Better Blues tells the story of a struggling African-American jazz artist from Brooklyn named Bleek Gilliam, played by Denzel Washington. “Ambitious, confident, controlled, and dedicated to his art, but also often insensitive and blind to the needs of those closest to him—be it the members of his quintet or the two young women who vie for his attentions—Bleek eventually has to make a choice or commitment. Ultimately, he leaves his art to accept his role as patriarch of a rather mundane middle-class lifestyle” (Bogle, 349-50).

Esther Ivarem is on the offensive again, saying “for much of its 130 minutes, Mo’ Better Blues feels like the film equivalent of rappers bragging about their assorted sexual conquests. Romantically sophomoric and bordering on misogynistic…” (Ivarem, 29).

Similar to She’s Gotta Have It, but reversed, Gilliam is in relationships with both of the women, and they both know about one another. Lee also includes also parallels to the color stratification of School Daze, casting the light-skinned, straight-haired Clarke versus the brown-skinned, natural-haired Indigo. Ivarem is of the impression that on top of it, Joie Lee’s stylists deliberately had her character looking dapper and less-than-perfect.

Things get complicated as both women turn up at the jazz club on the same night, wearing the same dress purchased by Gilliam for each lady. Later, he mixes up his lovers’ names. After a tumultuous story that lends more drama to the love triangle than the artist’s life, Clarke ends up with a member of Gilliam’s entourage, and Gilliam, years later, career over after an alley-beating, begs Indigo for her love. After much convincing on his part, and much resistance on hers, the two end up happily ever after and have a son whom they name Miles.

Iverem, ever the devil’s advocate, dares suggest that the movie sends the message that for some men, the maturity of settling down for marriage is only possible when they hit a dead end in their life—and only then will they take the female dream of love after the male dream of conquering the world has faded (Ivarem, 29-30).

Regardless of whether or not that was Lee’s intention, I believe his storytelling was realistic—even comparable to the lives of musicians, especially “rock stars,” today.

Throughout the years, Spike Lee’s portrayals of black women in his films have been analyzed and critiqued—often in a negative light. However, through objective critical analysis of the deeper meanings of the characters, and engaging in conversation with the writer and director behind such operations, the intent is clear—to bring awareness to race relations and eradicate the ignorant images that blacks have not only been subjected to, but allowed to be applied to themselves since their inception in film.

And if portrayals of reality are too much for some people to stomach—then so be it.

His frustration with modern black film is no secret; of Chuck Wilson’s ghetto, misogynistic 2004 movie, Lee said, “When African-American filmmakers make…Soul Plane and then say, ‘It’s just a comedy, just a movie,’ these are people who don’t really know the history of the negative portrayal of African-Americans in film and television. All along I’ve been blasting that film, saying it’s nothing but buffoonery and coonery. So they ask Snoop Dogg about it and he said, ‘How can Spike Lee talk? Those films School Daze and Do the Right Thing are nothing but stereotypes…he should just be quiet.’ Sometimes, you can let people hang themselves” (Aftab, 295).

Lee’s films air out the dirty laundry that blacks have traditionally kept hidden in the closet. His films have featured some of the typical black typecasts. However, for the most part, rather than perpetuating the modern, stereotypical portrayals of blacks: enjoying the ghetto life flashing rims, grills, and G’s, being sexually objectified, and being addicted to drugs and ill-bred—Lee seeks to portray the realistic life that many Americans can relate to, especially those from Brooklyn or Harlem.

Do the Right Thing

While he has featured crack heads and gang bangers and other negative images in his movies, Lee’s characters are often real and upstanding; doing the right thing.

[ignore the gun in the little boy's paper bag.] Clockers

Of Lee’s movie structure, Nelson George says, “He defies expectations, he has multiple endings, he does not always pick up threads…he [does not] work in the confines of a traditional screenplay. Every time he is given one, he Spikes it” (Aftab, 298).

Climbing the ladder from being a film student, to studio rejection, to a $175,000 budget that he begged into existence—all the way to having multi-million dollar budgeted films reaching huge audiences and featuring other artists such as Wesley Snipes, Damon Wayans, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Mos Def—Lee says he just wants to show that others can (and should) do what he did.

With the lack of substantial black filmmakers, the voices and stories of African-Americans are not being told—reducing the black experience to detrimental comedies that are modern-day twists on the blackface minstrel shows of the 1920s.

I think that a lot of times black artists are not held accountable as they should be. I don’t feel that…we should be let off the hook, to do whatever we want to do:…performing in South Africa, or like Eazy-E, having lunch with President Bush [Sr.] and being a member of the Inner Circle and donating $2500 to the Republican party and at the same time being a member of a rap group [NWA] that says “Fuck the Police.” What kind of reasoning is that? (Breskin, 184)

Through maintaining the integrity of his films and keeping sight of the big picture, Spike Lee will remain as the no-holds-barred, legendary, black filmmaker who provoked people to think and talk about substantial issues, however uncomfortable. Perhaps his methods were crude, direct, or lacking in diplomacy, but his honest reflection of American culture has forever changed the paradigms of the movie industry.