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DOUGLAS KELLNER

4 Aesthetics, Ethics, and Politics in the Films of Spike Lee

During the 1980s, Hollywood joined Ronald Reagan and his administration in neglecting African-American issues and concems.1 Few serious films during the decade featured Blacks; instead, Blacks were generally stereotypically portrayed in comedies, often with an African-American comic like Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy playing against a white buddy.2 In this context, Spike Lee's films constitute a significant intervention into the Hollywood film system. Addressing issues of race, gen- der, and class from a resolutely black perspective, Lee's films provide insights into these explosive problematics missing from mainstream white cinema. Starting with low-budget indepen- dent pictures like Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads and She's Gotta Have It, Lee moved to Hollywood financing of his films starting with School Daze, a focus on black college life that spoofed the college film genre and the musical. His next film, Do the Right Thing (DRT), was immediately recognized as an im- portant cinematic statement concerning the situation of Blacks in contemporary U.S. society, and the films that followed (Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, and Crooklyn) won Lee recog- nition as one of the most important filmmakers at work in the United States today.

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Moreover, Lee's financial and critical successes helped open the door to more studio-produced and -distributed black- directed films. The profits made by Lee's films showed that there was an audience for black films dealing with contemporary reali- ties. Estimates suggest that from 25 to 30 percent of the U.S. film audience is African-American (overrepresenting Blacks' 13 percent of the population), and Hollywood calculated that there was a significant audience for black-oriented films. 3 Moreover, the profits from Lee's early low-budget films procured continued financing of his own films and paved the way for · a renaissance of films by (usually young male) African-Americans during the 1990s.4

In this essay, I examine Spike Lee's aesthetics, vision of moral- ity, and politics, arguing that his aesthetic strategies draw on Brechtian modernism and that his films are morality tales that convey ethical images and messages to their audiences. I also discuss Lee's politics, focusing on the figure of Malcolm X in. Lee's work and his sometimes contradictory identity politics, in which politics per se are subordinate to creating one's identity and identity is defined primarily in terms of cultural style. De- spite their limitations, Lee's films address key issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, and black politics. Cumulatively, they provide a compelling cinematic exploration of the situation of Blacks in contemporary U.S. society and of the limited political options at their disposal. I begin with a reading of DRT, turn to Malcolm X (hereafter in this essay X), and conclude with more general comments on Lee's gender politics, identity politics, and aesthetic strategies. 5

DO THE RIGHT THING AS A BRECHTIAN MORALITY TALE

DRT takes place in a Brooklyn ghetto on the hottest day of the year. Mookie (played by Spike Lee) gets up and goes to work at Sal's Famous Pizzeria on a Saturday morning. Various

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 75

neighborhood characters appear as Lee paints a tableau of the interactions between Blacks and Italians and the Hispanic and Korean residents of the Brooklyn ghetto of "Bed-Stuy." Conflicts between the Blacks and Italians erupt, and when a black youth is killed by the police, the crowd destroys the pizzeria.

Lee set out to make a film about black urban experience from a black perspective. His film transcodes the discourses, style, and conventions of African-American culture, with an emphasis on black nationalism that affirms the specificity of black experience and its differences from mainstream white culture. Lee presents black ways of speaking, walking, dressing, and acting, drawing on black slang, music, images, and style. His films are richly textured ethnographies of urban Blacks negotiating the allures of the consumer and media society and the dangers of racism and an oppressive urban environment. The result is a body of work that represents uniquely black perspectives, voices, styles, and politics.

Yet Lee also draws on the techniques of modernism and pro- duces original innovative films that articulate his own vision and aesthetic style. In particular, like the German artist Bertolt Brecht, Spike Lee dramatizes ti.'1.e necessity of making moral and political choices.6 Both Brecht and Lee produce a sort of "epic drama" that paints a wide tableau of typical social characters, shows examples of social and asocial behavior, and delivers di- dactic messages to the audience. Both Brecht and Lee utilize music, comedy, drama, vignettes of typical behavior, and figures who present the messages the author wishes to convey . . Both present didactic learning plays, which strive to teach people to discover and then do "the right thing," while criticizing im- proper and antisocial behavior. Brecht's plays (as well as his prose, his film Kuhle Wampe, and his radio plays) depict charac- ter types in situations that force one to observe the consequences of typical behavior. Lee, I would argue, does the same thing· in DRT (and most of his other films). In particular, the three street- corner philosophers, who offer comic commentary throughout,

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are very Brechtian, as is the radio disc jockey Mister Sefior Love Daddy, who not only tells the audience to do the right thing throughout the movie ("and that's the truth, Ruth"), but repeat- edly specifies "the right thing," insisting that the ghetto popula- tion "Wake up," "Love one another," and "Chill!" · DRT poses the question of political and social morality for its _ audience in the contemporary era: what is "the right thing" for oppressed groups like urban Blacks? The film is arguably mod- ernist in that it leaves unanswered the question of the politically . "right thing" to do. By "modernist," I refer, first, to aesthetic strategies of producing texts that are open and polyvocal, that disseminate a wealth of meanings rather than a central univocal meaning or message, and that require an active reader to pro- duce the meanings.7 Second, I take modernism to be an aesthetic tend~ncy to produce unique works of art that bear the vision and stylistic imprint of their creator. Third, the type of modernism associated with what Peter Burger calls the "historical avant- garde" attempts to produce serious works that change individu- als' perceptions and lives and strive to promote social transfor- mation. Such movements as futurism, expressionism, Dadaism, and surrealism meet these criteria, as do the works of Brecht and Lee, though I ultimately argue that Lee's films contain a unique mixture of American popular cultural forms and modernism, inflected by Lee's African-American experience. 8

I am claiming that in a formal sense the works of Spike Lee are in accord with these modernist criteria and that his aesthetic strategies are especially close to those of Brecht. Lee's texts tend to be open, to elicit divergent readings, and to generate a wealth of often divergent responses. He is, in this sense, an "auteur" whose films project a distinctive style and vision and comprise a coherent body of work with distinctive features. His work is highly serious and strives for specific transformative moral and political effects. Yet there are a'.lso ambiguities in Lee's work. While Mister Sefior Love Daddy serves as a voice of social moral- ity (Sittlichkeit, how to treat others) in DRT, it is an open question

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 77

what, if any, political position Lee is affirming. Does he agree with the politics of Malcolm X or with those of Martin Luther King, Jr.? Is he advocating reform or revolution, ,integration or black nationalism, or a synthesis of the two?

Throughout the film, Public Enemy's powerful rap song "Fight the Power" resonates, but it is not clear from the film how one is supposed to fight the power or what political strategies one should employ to carry out the struggle. Indeed, one co4ld read DRT as a postmodern evacuation of viable political options for Blacks and people of color in the present age.9 That is, one could read the film as demonstrating that, politically, there is no "right thing" to do in the face of hopeless ghetto poverty, virulent racism, and a lack of viable political options and movements. In this postmodern reading, the film projects a bleak, nihilistic view of the future, marked by hopelessness and the collapse of mod- ern black politics. In this context, political reformism and Martin Luther King's nonviolence appear to be questionable instru- ments of change. But it is not clear that violence is an attractive option, and one could even read the film as questioning social violence, by demonstrating that it ultimately hurts the people in the neighborhoods in which it explodes. (One could interpret the May 1992 Los Angeles uprising, which Lee's film uncannily anticipates, in a similar light.)

On this postmodern reading, it is not clear what the power is that one is supposed to fight, what instruments one is supposed to use, and what one's goals are supposed to be. This nihilistic interpretation· suggests that modern politics as a whole are bank- rupt, 10 that neither reform nor revolution can work, that African-Americans are condemned to hopeless poverty and the subordinate position of an oppressed underclass without the faintest possibility of improving their situation. Yet one could also read DRT as a modernist film that forces the viewer to compare the politics of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and to decide for him- or herself what the "right thing" is for Blacks. In the following analysis, I examine whether DRT is a modernist

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or postmodernist film in both its style and politics, and whether Lee privileges Malcolm X or Martin Luther King in the film. But first I want to interrogate the cultural politics of DRT.

CULTURAL POLITICS IN DO THE RIGHT THING

',[he characters in DRT represent distinctive neighbor- hood African-, Hispanic-, Italian-, Anglo-, and Korean-American individuals, and Lee depicts their behavior and the~r conflicts with one another. Race he presents in terms of cultural identity and image, especially cultural style. Norman Denzin, in Images of Postmodern Sodety, argues that the characters wear T-shirts to identify their cultural politics and style.11 For example, Mookie, the black worker in Sal's· pizzeria, wears a Jackie Robinson base- • ball jersey, symbolizing a Black who breaks the color line in the white man's world (as Lee himself has done). While working, Mookie also wears a shirt with his name on it and the logo of "Sal's Pizzeria," signifying his position between the two worlds. Radio Raheem, whose radio blasts out "Fight the Power," pro- voking the confrontation with Sal, wears a T-shirt proclaiming "Bed-Stuy or Die." This message identifies him as a figure who asserts black solidarity and rebellion to preserve the community.

T-shirts also project a color-coding symbolism: Pino, Sal's rac- ist son, wears white,· while Vito, the son who gets along with Blacks, wears a black T-shirt. Sal's clothes code him as the boss/ worker who drives up to his pizzeria in a Cadillac, but he dons an apron · to make the pizzas, indicating that he is a petit- bourgeois small businessman. Other shirts identify the wearer with white or black cultural heroes. A young white man who has just purchased a ghetto apartment wears a Larry Bird Boston Celtics jersey, while a young b,Iack man wears the Los Angeles Lakers jersey of Magic Johnson. The Hispanics wear sleeveless colored T-shirts, while the older black men wear sleeveless white T-shirts, conventional single-colored shirts, or go topless. Most of the young women wear tube tops, though Mookie's sister, Jade, sports designer clothes.

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 79

FIGURE 11 A stylish Mookie offers advice to Vito, Sal's confused son. (Courtesy

of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.)

Clothes and fashion accoutrements depict the various charac- ters' styles and identity. Buggin' Out, an angry young black youth, sports a yellow African kente shirt, wears a gold chain around his neck, and has a gold tooth. He also wears Nike Air Jordan shoes (which Lee himself promotes in commercials), and explodes with anger when the Celtic fan accidentally soils them. Radio Raheem wears the same type of shoes himself, and his ghetto blaster and rap music establish his cultural identity (he plays only Public Enemy). He also wears a set of gold brass knuckle .rings, engraved with "love" and "hate," which suppos- edly represent the two sides of the sometimes gentle and some- times violent Raheem. 12 Mookie too sports a gold tooth and earring, marking him as a participant in black urban cultural conventions.13 The three black street-comer philosophers, dis- coursing on the current situation of Blacks, are casually dressed, while the alcoholic Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) wears old and dirty clothes, coding him as an example of failed black manhood.

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Mother Sister (Ruby Dee) dresses conventionally and represents traditional matriarchal black values in her disapproval of Da Mayor and "shiftless" young Blacks.

In fact, DRT influenced fashion trends: "The summer of 1989 saw millions of young people wearing Mookie-style surfer bag- gies over Lycra bike shorts."14 Subsequently, Spike Lee designed his owri T-shirts and clothes and opened a fashion store in Brooklyn; he also produced and acted in commercials for Nike Air Jordan shoes. He thus not only depicts a society in which cultural identity is.produced through style and consumption but contributes to this trend with both his films and his commercial activity.15

The ways that mass cultural images pervade style and fashion suggest that cultural identity is constituted in part by iconic images of ethnic cultural heroes, which are badges of identity and forces of division between the races. Sal has pictures of famous Italian-Americans on the wall of his pizzeria (his "Wall of Fame"), and Buggin' Out's demand that pictures of Blacks be put on the wall and Sal's vehement refusal to do so precipitate the attempted boycott and subsequent violence. A stuttering and perhaps mentally retarded young African-American male, Smiley, sells pictures of Malcolm and Martin, 16 who appear as icons of black politics, while graffiti contain references to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who constitute black political leaders as cultural heroes, like sports and music stars.

These scenes suggest how media ci.Ilture provides the material for identity and. how different subcultures appropriate different images. Identity is thus formed on a terrain of struggle in which individuals choose their own cultural meanings and style in a differential system that always involves the affirmation of some tokens of identity and the rejection of others. Social institutions individuate people with social security numbers, voter registra- tion rolls, consumer lists, data bases, police and academic re- cords, and so on, but creating one's individual identity means refusing to be defined by these determinations. More and more, it is the case that media culture provides resources that are ap-

,l

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 81

propriated by audiences to make meanings, to create identities, as when teenage girls use Madonna as a model, or Blacks emulate African-American cultural heroes, or aspiring yuppies look to professionals on television shows like LA Law for patterns of identity.

Identity is thus mediated by mass-produced images, and im- age and cultural style are becoming ever more central to the construction of individual identities. Media culture is replacing nationalism, religion, the family, and education as sources of identity. Nationalism provides powerful imaginary community and cultural identities; it also produces forms of media culture that act as surrogates for both individuals and groups.17

Media culture also provides mo_dern · morality tales that dem- onstrate right and wrong behavior, that show what to _do and what not to do, that indicate what is or is not "the right thing." Media culture is thus an important new force of socialization, and it is one of the merits of DRT that it puts this process of identity creation on display in a way that shows how different identities are produced in opposition to each other and represent a terrain in which social conflicts are played out.

DRT reveals how cultural identity is also articulated through music and expressive styles. The black disc jockey and Radio Raheem play exclusively black music, while the Puerto Rican street teens play Spanish-inflected music. A scene in which Radio Raheem and the Puerto Ricans duel with each other with loud- playing radios signifies the cultural clash and divisions in the ghetto community. In addition, Sal provokes Radio Raheem by ordering him to "turn that jungle music off. We ain't in Africa," while Buggin' Out replies, "Why it gotta be about jungle music and Africa?"

Thus, different cultures use popular music to establish their cultural identities, and different styles of music divide the com- munity. But it is racial epithets that most pungently articulate the social conflicts and tensions. At a key juncture in the film, in modernist and Brechtian fashion, Lee interrupts his narrative and has the characters look into the camera to spit out vicious

82 DOUGLAS KELLNER

racial slurs, with Mookie attacking the Italians ("Dago, Wop, Guinea, garlic breath, pizza slingin' spaghetti bender"). Pino, the racist son, replies to the camera, assaulting Blacks: "Gold chain wearin' fried chicken and biscuit eatin' monkey, ape, baboon, fast runnin', high jumpin', spear chuckin', basket ball dunkin' titso spade, take your fuckin' pizza and go back to Africa."

A Puerto Rican attacks Koreans in similar racial terms and the Korean grocer attacks Jews. This scene brilliantly shows the racial differences encoded in language, but tends to equate all modes of racism as logically equivalent, whereas one could argue that the institutional racism against Blacks is far more virulent than the variegated cultural racisms articulated and that Lee never really catches the reality of racism as part of a system of oppres- sion.18 From this perspective, society especially oppresses people of color: not only is there racism and racial hatred among all races and ethnics, but there is an unequal distribution of power and wealth in U.S. society, in which Blacks and people of color tend to suffer disproportionately from systemic racial and class oppression. Put otherwise, Lee does not appear to understand that capitalism is a system of oppression that exploits and op- presses its underclass, particularly people of color.

Lee presents racism in personal and individualist terms as hostility among members of different groups, thus failing to illuminate the causes and structures of racism. Moreover, the film denigrates political action, caricaturing collective action and the tactic of the economic boycott, which served the Civil Rights movement so well.19

In addition, Lee constantly celebrates consumerism, the ob- ject of much of the film's focus, rather than depicting how consumerism has .come to organize ghetto existence. Much em- phasis is placed on eating pizza, ice cream, and ice cones, drink- ing beer, and displaying consumer items. As I noted, to a large extent identity is constructed through clothes and style, and no one questions consumerist practices.

Yet Lee incisively shows how clothes, music, language, and style separate the various ethnic groups in his vision of a divided

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 83

FIGURE 12

Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), Sal and his sons, Vito and Pino. (From the

editor's collection.)

ghetto. Such a situation is ripe for violence, and DRT anticipated the Los Angeles uprisings that erupted in May 1992 after a white jury acquitted the policemen who were videotaped viciously beating Rodney King. DRT is thus properly read as a cautionary tale warning what might happen if relations between the races continue to worsen.

Thus, along with its limitations, DRT has its insights and can be said to articulate some of the conditions that produce vio- lence in the ghettos. The film is particularly strong in depicting the explosion that erupts after Radio Raheem is killed by white policemen. Lee's own character, Mookie, throws a garbage can through the window of Sal's pizzeria and violence breaks out that destroys the establishment. A close viewing of Mookie's action suggests that it is a deliberate act and that Lee is pres- enting it as "the right thing." The camera zooms in on Mookie deliberating about what to do after the police have accidentally choked Radio Raheem to death in a fight that began when Sal

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· smashed his beloved radio. Lee then pans a long and slow shot of Mookie methodically walking away to pick up a garbage can and then returning to throw it through the window of the pizze- ria. Clearly he does it out of rage over Radio Raheem's death.20

On this reading, Lee is privileging human life over property and is suggesting that violence against property is a legitimate act of retaliation. One could also argue that Mookie is directing the mob's violence against the pizzeria and away from Sal and his sons, thus ultimately protecting them from the mob's wrath.21 It is, of course, debatable whether the ad: of violence was "the right thing," though it is a rejection of King's philoso- phy of nonviolence. And it is not clear whether this act produces anything positive for Mookie or the black community; one could indeed argue the opposite. 22 Smiley puts a picture of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King standing side by side on the wall, thus fulfilling Raheem's desire to have black imag~s in the pizzeria. But the picture is then shown burning, raising the question of whether this represents the futility of black politics in the pres- ent age and allegorically enacts the fading relevance of both Malcolm and Martin.

In any case, the charge leveled by (white conservative) critics · that DRT would lead to violence and increase race hatred is misplaced. Rather, Lee's film explores the social environment and racial tensions and conflicts that are likely to produce racial and other forms of urban violence. In interviews after the film was released, Lee protested that he was only depicting exisdng urban conditions and not offering solutions, and this position seems wholly reasonable.

Yet one could criticize Lee for deconstructing modern politics as futile or irrelevant, thus giving voice to a postmodern nihil- ism.23 However, certain aspects of the film counter this reading of DRT as an expression of a bleak, postmodern pessimism that would affirm the obsolescence of a modern black politics of the sort typified by Malcolm and Martin. Lee himself later claimed that he is affirming a politics that would embrace aspects of bo,th men, that would use the philosophies and strategies of both !or

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 85

social change in different contexts. He calls attention to the photo put on the wall of the pizzeria as it burns: "Malcolm X and Dr. King are shaking hands and smiling. So when I put those two quotes there, it was not a question of either/or, not for me, anyway, just a choice of tactics. I think they were men who chose different paths trying to reach the same destination against a common opponent.1124

. Thus, on this view, the seemingly opposing quotations of King and Malcolm X that close DRT both articulate valid posi- tions, and which view is more appropriate would depend on the context. Yet the scenario of the film seems to privilege Malcolm X, who would eventually be the topic of Lee's major film epic to date. Indeed, the vision of DRT is in some ways consistent with Malcolm X's black nationalist teachings and thus affirms certain modern political positions. One of the street-corner philoso- phers expresses wonder and chagrin that a Korean grocer can turn a boarded-up building into a successful business, while Blacks cannot. Surely this is a nod toward Malcolm X's views 01,1 black self-sufficiency and economic independence, and certainly Spike Lee has enacted this philosophy as successfully as anyone in the African-American community. Clearly Mookie is going to get nowhere working in Sal's pizzeria and the other homeboys in ihe movie are also going nowhere. "Time to wake up, broth- ers, and get your house in order" is an arguable message of the film.

Similarly, Malcolm X placed heavy emphasis on black man- hood, standing up to the white power structure, fighting back, and acting decisively to maintain one's self-respect. In that sense, Mookie's violent action exemplifies certain aspects of Mal- colm's teachings, though one could question whether this was in fact "the right thing." One could also ask whether Malcolm X did or did not advocate "the right thing" politically at various phases of his life and what his legacy is for us today. I will interrogate X from these perspectives, arguing that the film, like DRT, is ultimately a morality tale and that Lee's politics slide into a black identity politics that can be pinned down neither

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to specific modern positions (i.e., Martin or Malcolm) nor to postmodern nihilism.

X AS A MORALITY TALE

From my reading of DRT, one could argue that X is also a morality tale interrogating "the right thing" for Blacks in both the individual and political sense. In this reading, the figure of Malcolm X is the center of the film, and the crucial transitions involve his transformation from criminal to dedicated black na- tionalist working for the Nation of Islam and subsequently to a more secular internationalist. The key, then, is Malcolm X as moral ideal, as an enlightened model of a black transformation to self-sovereignty.

Although Lee strongly affirms Malcolm X's politics, he is not, I believe, an uncritical sycophant and hagiographer, and brings into question many of Malcolm X's views, while forcing the audience to decide whether the actions of Malcolm or other characters in his films are indeed "the right thing." I thus see X and DRT as political morality plays and believe that. Spike Lee was perfectly justified in telling black and other children to skip school to see the film X. In viewing the film, one not only learns a great deal about one of the most important figures of our time, but is forced to reflect upon what is "the right thing" in terms of individual and political morality. I would argue that X focuses on Malcolm as a role model for blacks and is more a morality tale than a political drama. Malcolm X certainly exemplifies someone who undergoes profound self-transformation and forges his own identity under difficult circumstances. (The delin- eation of such righteous models is also congruent with Brechtian strategy.)

The first part of X, arguably, shows what the wrong thing is for Blacks today, that is, engaging in a life of crime, drugs, and shallow materialism. 25 Yet Lee invests so much time and energy in this phase of Malcolm's life that the onetifi1:e criminal Mal- colm Little seems almost attractive and certainly sympathetic.

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Though in his autobiography Malcolm X himself presents Mal- colm Little as a very bad dude, such an image does not emerge from Lee's film. Denzel Washington creates an engaging charac- ter, and Lee's use of comedy and melodrama invests Malcolm Little with appealing qualities. So although he is caught in crimi- nal activity and goes to jail, the film puts a positive spin on his early life, full of high times with white women, drugs, exciting high jinks, and good buddies.26

Lee uses the strategy of epic realist historical tableaux in this sequence, heavily seasoned with comedy, satire, and music. As always, music is extremely important in Lee's films. X can be seen and heard as a history of black music and its role in every- day life. Again, there are parallels with Brecht, as Brecht used music to capture the ethos and style of an age and as a way of making, or highlighting, didactic points. Moreover, Lee presents certain forms of black behavior, such as "conking" hair, as bad and the early sequences contain the obvious moral that a life of crime leads to jail. The message concerning black men who involve themselves with white women is not as cle_ar, though Lee tends to present interracial relationships negatively in X and in his other films, such as fungle Fever.27

The prison sequence shows Malcolm Little refusing to submit to the humiliations of prison life and then being broken by solitary confinement. But he also comes to accept Black Muslim teachings and betters. himself through study. It is one_ of Lee's pervasive messages that education is the way to "Uplift the Race" (one of the mottoes of School Daze and the title of the book on that film), and certainly Malcolm X embodies this philosophy as he learns to study and acquire knowledge. Indeed, Malcolm X emerges from prison a totally changed man and an exemplar of someone who has transformed himself . .

As we have seen, X can be read as a Brechtian epic drama or morality tale that conveys lessons for Blacks and others by show- ing tableaux of social and asocial behavior that contrast positive and negative values. Lee deploys a variety of genres and styles, and mixes music, comedy, and dramatic flashbacks into key

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episodes of Malcolm X's early life (the mixing of genres is also Brechtian). The last third of the film continues this strategy, though it is too dense and compressed to present adequately Malcolm X's teaching and the complexity of his later positions. The key episode is the shift from Malcolm X's adherence to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam to his radical activist social philosophy. Yet the film presents, arguably, too much of the religious and dubious racial teachings of the Nation of Islam and not enough of Malcolm X's late social philosophy, which many believe is his most · valuable radical legacy.28

In fact, the film ends, during its title sequence, with the same ambiguity as DRT, which alternates images and quotes of Mal- colm X and Martin Luther King. X concludes with a black gospel song, "Sometime We'll All Be Free," which suggests Christian · patience, followed by the song "Revolution" by the radical group Arrested Development. Once again, Lee plays off two opposing political ideologies, but in this film he would seem to privilege a politics of revolution (although, as I have suggested, he also privileges individual change and self-development, taking Mal- colm as a role model rather than representative of a specific political philosophy) .

. In Lee's defense, I should add that he does spend much energy trying to clarify the reasons for Malcolm X's break with the Nation of Islam and portraying Malcolm's transition to a radi- cally new position, again underlying the importance of self- · transformation. Lee also deals with the complexity of Malcolm X's assassination and the strong possibility that not just the Nation of Islam but also U.S. government agencies were involved in his murder. Moreover, Lee shows that while he is in Mecca, the "mature" Malcolm sees that all colors are equal. However, I am bracketing the question of historical accuracy in my discus- sion (to which much of the criticism of the film has been di- rected, by both Lee's friends and enemies) and am focusing instead on the issue of aesthetic strategy and the politics of the film. 29 In any case, Lee's film on Malcolm X raises the question

AESTHETICS., ETHICS, AND POLITICS 89

concerning his own politics, a topic that I take up in the next section.

CULTURE AND POLITICS

In this essay, I have focused on Lee's cultural politics and use of Brechtian aesthetic strategies. Yet there are some major differences between Brecht and Lee. Brecht was a dedi- cated communist with very specific political values and a fairly specific Marxist political agenda.30 Lee's politics; by contrast, appear more vague and indeterminate, positioning Lee some- where between a high m~dernist stance thai: refuses any political position, a more pragmatic contextualist politics that draws on disparate sources for specific political interventions in concrete political situations, and an identity politics defined primarily through the production of cultural identity.

On the whole, Lee's cultural politics focus on the specificity of African-American cultural style and identity as the key con- stituents of a black politics of identity. Such cultural politics are valuable for providing awareness of the distinct forms of oppression suffered by subordinate groups and for making the production of an independent cultural style and identity an important part of the struggle against oppression. But cultural politics might deflect attention and energy from pressing politi- cal and economic issues and may well produce a separatist con- sciousness that undermines a politics of alliance that would mo- bilize distinct groups against oppressive forces, practices, and institutions.

Hence, I wish to qualify my presentation of Lee as a Brechtian, for I do not think that Malcolm X plays the role· that Marx played in Brecht's work, nor, for that matter, does the black radical tradition as a whole play as important a role in Lee's work as the Marxian tradition played in Brecht's work. Lee's politics are, for the most part, culturalist, focusing on black identity and moral decisions concerning race, gender, and personal identity.

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This is evident in DRT, where Lee interrogates the visible badges of cultural politics and presents the conflicts of the community primarily in cultural terms. Lee excels in presenting small-group dynamics but has not been successful in articulating the larger structures - and structural context of black oppression - that affect communities, social groups, and individual lives. Thus, he does not really articulate the dynamics of class and racial oppression in U.S. society.

This leads to related questions about the representations of gender, race, and class in Spike Lee's films. DRT focuses more on gender and race than on class, seeing the antagonism between Italians and Blacks more as a racial conflict than a class conflict. While the small businessman Sal can be seen as a representative of the class system that oppresses Blacks, he, like the Korean grocer, is really part of the ethnic working class himself, even though he owns a small business. Lee claims that he intended to deal with the black working class in DRT: "In this script I want to show the black working-class. Contrary to popular belief, we work. No welfare rolls here, pal, just hardworking people trying to make a decent living."31

This passage, written before he actually made the film, is curious because the only Blacks shown working are the disc jockey, Mookie, and a black cop. Mookie's sister is said to work, but it isn't clear whether any of the other Blacks are employed. And although the neighborhood is inhabited by what could be called the black underclass, there is no exploration of their oppressive living and working conditions. All of the characters define their identity in terms of fashion, consumption, and cul- tural style. Only the old drunk, Da Mayor, dresses in a slovenly way, while all of the other characters seem to be full-scale partici- pants in consumer society (much of the film, in fact, concerns the consumption of pizza, ice cream, ice cones, beer, and other drinks, fo·od, and consumer goods, for which everyone always seems to have the money).

Consequently, as I noted earlier, Lee tends to celebrate con- sumption and to define cultural identity in terms of style and

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 91

FIGURE 13 Da Mayor offers Mookie some words of wisdom. (Courtesy of the

Museum of Modern Art, New York.)

consumption patterns. Moreover, he fails to address the reality and dynamics of class oppression. Reflecting his own middle- class perspective, most of Lee's characters are middle class and upwardly mobile Blacks. The protagonists of She's Gotta Have It are middle class, and although some of the students in School Daze represent different classes and status groups, they are at least upwardly mobile. A scene in a fast-food chicken restaurant in which the students confront working-class Blacks suggests hostility between these African-American sectors, but their dif- ferences ·are not adequately explored in Lee's films.32 Mo' Better Blues and Jungle Fever focus on black professionals, and while the latter has powerful images of a crack house and the degradation of drug addiction, neither explores black underclass oppression.

Similarly, class and class oppression are not thoroughly exam- ined in X. The inner-city Blacks are shown in the beginning of the film buying zoot suits, getting their hair conked, and danc- ing in dazzling ballrooms where they can pick up white women.

92 DOUGLAS KELLNER .

A scene in which Malcolm is working on a train and fantasizes about pushing food into the face of an obnoxious white male customer depicts race rather than class hatred. In the next scene, Lee shows Malcolm becoming involved in a life of crime when a Harlem crime lord takes him on, suggesting that it is race hatred, rather than class oppression, that pushes Blacks into crime. No- where does Lee adequately explore class difference and exploita- tion. The Malcolm who converts to Islam takes on resolutely middle-class values, and the black underclass almost disappears from the film once he leaves prison and becomes a major politi- cal figure.

Thus, Lee projects his own black middle-class values into the characters of all his films. Amiri Baraka claims that Lee "is the quintessential buppie, almost the spirit of the young, upwardly mobile, Black, petit bourgeois professional" and argues that these values permeate his films. 33

Gender; like race, is a major focus of all of Lee's films, al- though he has been sharply criticized by black feminists for his treatment of the topic. bell hooks, for example, criticizes Lee's conventional construction of masculinity and stereotypical, usu- ally negative images of women. 34 His male characters often de- fine themselves by acts of violence and typically engage in ex- treme macho/masculinist behavior.· The women are generally more passive and powerless. There are, however, exceptions: Mookie's sister, Jade, and his Puerto Rican wife, Tina, verbally assault the male characters. These examples, however, show Lee's proclivity toward stereotypical images of female "bitch- iness," although Jade, played by his sister Joie Lee, is a strongly sympathetic character.

As Michele Wallace notes, Lee privileges conventional hetero- sexual relationships and stigmatizes oral sex, which, Wallace argues, demeans gays, as well as negatively portraying "the rest of the vast range of illicit sexual practices and psychosocial de- velopments beyond the pale of compulsory heterosexuality, in which such perverse passions as interracial sex and drug addic- tion are included. "35 In fact, I think that part of the underlying

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 93

problem with Lee's gender politks is his tendency to use Brecht- ian "typical" characters to depict "typical" scenes. The "typical," however, is a breath away from the stereotypical, archetypal, conventional, representative, average, and so on, and lends itself to caricature and distortion. Lee's characters thus often embody gender or racial stereotypes. He is a "realist" only in Brecht's sense of trying to depict "real" situations, but he does_ not engage the realities of underclass life or of gender oppression to any great extent. Indeed, like Brecht, he uses comedy, aesthetic inter- ruption, satire, farce, and other devices to confront the problems of race, gender, and sexuality. These are hot issues, and much of the interest in Lee's work resides in his attention to them. Yet one could question whether Lee interrogates gender and sexual- ity any more seriously or successfully than he interrogates class.

There is an almost obsessive focus on skin.color in Lee's films. In School Daze he divides Blacks according to the color of their skin. In Jungle Fever too, there are constant contrasts between light- and dark-skinned Blacks, and the wives of the two main black characters are extremely light-skinned. Both Fever and X fetishize white women, showing them to be an intense object of black male desire and a route to black male downfall. One of the jazz musician's girlfriends in Mo' Better Blues is light-skinned, while the other is dark black. Most of the sex scenes in Lee's films are shot at night and the lighting exaggerates skin color differences.

Yet as others have argued,36 Lee seems to rule out the possibil- ity of healthy romantic relationships between people of different color - a quasi-segregationist position that a more progressive multiculturalist vision would reject. There are also stereotypical doublings of women between "good" and "bad" in Lee's films, especially evident in X, where Malcolm's girlfriend Laura goes from good to bad. Laura is first depicted as Malcolm's good girlfriend, contrasted with the white woman Sophia. Laura, how- ever, becomes a junkie and a whore. Eventually, Malcolm's wife Betty appears as the ultimate good woman, against whom all previous and other women seem "bad." Yet this replicates the

94 DOUGLAS KELLNER

FIGURE 14 Nola Darling (Tracy Camila Johns) and Jamie Overstreet (Redmond Hicks), one of Nola's three lovers in She's Gotta Have It. (From the editor's collection.)

stereotypical "Madonna" and "whore" opposition that has dom- inated a certain type of classical Hollywood cinema. Possible exceptions to these stereotypes in X are the Muslim sisters who are seduced and made pregnant by Elijah Muhammad, but they too are ultimately presented as victims, as helpless objects of male desire and as breeding machines to perpetuate a male patri- archy.

Moreover, all of Lee's films relegate women to the sphere of private life; while men are active in public life. This is most striking in X, where Malcolm X's wife is depicted primarily as a dutiful spouse, raising his children and standing passively beside him. There are few positive images of women, or of egalitarian relationships between men and women, in Lee's films. 37 Mal- colm is shown as a harsh patriarch who seems to want a wife

FIGURE 15 Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington) and Clarke Betancourt (Cynda Williams), an aspiring singer and one of Bleek's two girlfriends in Mo' Better Blues. (Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.)

FIGURE 16 Bleek and Indigo Downes (Joie Lee), a schoolteacher and the girl- friend whom Bleek finally marries in Mo' Better Blues. (Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.)

96 DOUGLAS KELLNER

primarily for breeding. Flipper in Jungle Fever abandons his black wife for a white woman and then this relationship is shown to fail. Nola Darling in She's Gotta Have It plays off three black men against each other and the resulting tension harms all her relationships. The jazz musician has two girlfriends in Mo' Better Blues and, once again, this situation is shown as untenable; the main character marries the more conventional woman, has a family, and gives up his jazz career.

In part, · Lee's sexual politics fall prey to the stereotypes of the classical Hollywood cinema. But they also reflect the male chauvinism in the black and other minority communities and the intensity of conflict between male and female - explosive tensions also articulated in rap music. But his cinema does not explore the causes of these tensions or propose any solutions.

For the most part, Lee privileges morality over politics in his films, which are best viewed as morality tales rather than politi- cal learning plays in Brecht's sense.38 Although his early musical, School Daze, thematizes class to some degree, on the whole Lee's films deal mo!e with race and gender than class (which is, of course, a major focus of Brecht's Marxian aesthetic).

Before making my final criticisms, however, I want to stress the progressiveness and excellence of Lee's films in relation to other films produced by major studios. Both aesthetically and politically, his films are far superior to most other Hollywood films. Moreover, Lee is to be commended for his ability to use media culture to articulate African-American perspectives, which are then disseminated through his films and his energetic pro- motion of them. Yet it is through critique and self-critique that cultural and political progress is made, and Lee has been criti- cized from within the African-American community for being

· politically vague and indeterminate and for replacing nitty-gritty issue politics with cultural politics.39

Lee tends to reduce politics to cultural identity and slogans. School Daze ends with the message "Wake up!" proclaimed by the black activist hero of the movie, and DRT begins and ends with the disc jockey Mister Sefior Love Daddy admonishing his

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 97

listeners to do the same. Fine, wake up. But to what, and what does one do when one is awake? Such concrete politics seem beyond the purview of Lee's vi~ion and suggest the limitations of his politics.

Moreover, he seems to be concerned primarily, with the situa- tion and oppression of Blacks and not that of other groups. This could be excused on the grounds that someone needs to undertake this effort, yet Lee tends to ignore ho~ a system of exploitation oppresses Blacks and other people of color and oppressed groups. Indeed, Lee's color fetishism aids a divide- and-conquer perspective that, in essence, Blinds the colonized and prevents solidarity among the oppressed.40

Identity politics helps keep qppressed peoples apart and tends to reduce politics to the search for a cultural identity and style. Lee never portrays political movements in any serious fashion. He fetishizes leaders, which, as Adolph Reed writes,

also reflects an idea of politics that is antidemocratic and qui- etistic. Great Leaders don't make movements. Insofar as they aren't just the work of clever publicists, they are in most im- portant respects holograms created by movements. Under- standing politics as a story of Great Leaders produces nostalgia and celebration, not mobilization and action.41

Although there is a conflict in Lee's work between his affir- mation of Malcolm X's modern politics and his evocation of a postmodern political pessimism, it seems to me that the central problem with Lee's politics is that he ultimately comes down on the side of a culturalist identity politics, which subordinates politics in general to the creation of personal identity. Identity

. for Lee is primarily black identity, .and he constantly operates with a binary opposition between black and white, "us" and "them." Lee's identity politics, moreover, are primarily cultur- alist, in which identity is defined by image and cultural style. This is clearly the case in DRT, where every character's politics is defined in terms of cultural style. None of the characters is involved in a political organization, movement, or struggle.

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FIGURE 17 Radio Raheem and Buggin' Out as the keepers of the "Dump Koch" wall of fame. Lee's graphic construction displays his political commit- ment to the mayoral campaign of David Dinkins. Mike Tyson offers a right hook to Mayor Koch, while Jesse Jackson posters demand onlookers to "Get Out and Vote" and remind them that "Our Vote Counts!" (From the editor's collection.)

Consequently, Buggin' Out's boycott of Sal's pizzeria is a pa- thetic caricature of the real struggles by people of color for rights and survival.

Concrete issues of black politics in DRT are reduced to graffiti on walls, to slogans like "Tawana Told the Truth," "Dump Koch," or "Jesse," referring to Jesse Jackson's 1988 run for the presidency. As bell hooks notes, Lee never explores alliance poli- tics and fails to realize that

combatting racism and other forms of domination will require that black people develop solidarity with folks unlike ourselves

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS

who share similar political commitments: Racism ... is not erased when we control the production of goods and services in various black communities, or infuse our art with an Afro- centric perspective. Nostalgia for expressions of bl~ck style is less and less accessible to black folks who no longer live in predominantly black communities.42 •

99

Indeed, a genuine emancipatory politics would not limit itself to single-issue or identity politics, but would be open to a politics of otherness, an alliance politics that would identify common interests against oppression. Malcolm came close to this near the end of his life, which is why he was so dangerous. The Nation of Islam doesn't really threaten the white power structure with its segregationist ethos and reverse racism (or with its problematical theology). But a politics of alliance that brings together progres- sive Blacks, Whites, and other people around an agenda fostering genuine social change and justice could be a powerful force for real social progress.

Lee's politics of identity, by contrast, works primarily to i~dict racism and to promote the interests of black identity and pride, channeled largely into cultural style. As many critics have ar- gued, Lee ultimately reduces Malcolm X to an image in both DRT and X, and _ he uses him to promote' the consumption of Malcolm X products. This consumption of Malcolm is superfi- cially expressed as a quest for black identity. Spike Lee thus ultimately falls victim to a consumerist image culture, in which value, worth, and identity are defined in terms of images and cultural style, in which one's image determines who one is and how one will be received.

Film, to be sure, is at its best a feast of images, but critical film interrogates these images, deconstructs those that serve the interests of domination, and develops alternative images, narra- tives, and aesthetic strategies. Lee, however, does not rise above the repertoire of dominant images already established and repro- duces many questionable images of men, women, Blacks, and other races. Although his films show that cinema can address key political issues and generate interesting discussions that may

I 00 DOUGLAS KELLNER

have progressive political effects, so far his films, whatever their merits, are limited, specifically in their identity politics.

Yet Lee's films do attack at least some of the many forms of sex, race, gender, and class oppression. While they might not ultimately provide models of a "counterhegemonic cinema" as bell hooks and other African-American radicals desire, they pro- vide some engaging and provocative cinematic interventions that are far superior to the crass genre spectacles of the Holly- wood cinema.

NOTES

This essay was first presented in a syposium on Malcolm X organized by Mark Reid for the 1993 Society for Cinema Studies conference and was then presented in a workshop on contemporary film at the American Sociology Association. Special thanks to Steve Best, Harvey Cormier, Cynthia Freeland, Rhonda Hammer, Kelly Oliver, Mark Reid, and Thomas Wartenberg for comments on earlier versions.

1. There has been much debate concerning what terminology to use in describing black people of African-American descent in the United States. Following what seems to be the current convention, I use the term "Blacks" and "African-Americans" interchangeably, though some prefer "Afro-American" and some prefer to leave out the hy- phen. To me the hyphen usefully signifies the cultural duality and tensions in the experiences of Blacks in the Americas who have both an African origin and American roots and experience.

2. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), p. 113.

3. In Framing Blackness, Guerrero also claims that in times of a general slump, Hollywood invests in low-budget black films to raise the profit margin, whereas it ignores African-American films when profits are high and the industry has "no need to continue a specifi- cally black-focused product line" (p. 165).

4. Alex Patterson, Spike Lee: A Biography (London: Abacas, 1992), pp. 55, · 92, 121. Patterson notes that Lee's She's Gotta Have It cost only

$175,000 and pulled.in over $8.5 million; School Daze was budgeted at $5.8 million and took in more than $15 million; Do the Right Thing was budgeted at $6.5 million and grossed over $25 million. Many of Lee's films have also been profitable in the video-cassette

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS IOI

market. Evidently, the money made on these films persuaded the Hollywood money establishment that Lee · and other young black directors were marketable and funded a burgeoning black cinema in the early 1990s; also see Guerrero, Framing Blackness, p. 157, and Patterson, Spike Lee, p. 223. In Redefining Black Film (Berkeley: Univer- sity of California Press, 1993), however, Mark A. Reid notes that Lee's films draw on earlier black cinema: "Lee's film journals never recognize his debt to other black filmmakers, yet he borrows from their cinematic portrayals of urban black life and their use of con- temporary black music" (p. 107).

5. I am aware that there are problems with a white male professional in a privileged race, class, and gender position writing about African- American culture and politics, but I would argue that it is important for people of different identities to explore the terrain of difference and otherness. I consulted with a number of African-American and feminist critics on this project and am grateful to many people for their comments.

6. I do not know whether Brecht specifically influenced Lee, or if Lee (re)invented something like a Brechtian cinema from his own experi- ences and resources. I have not yet found any references to Brecht in the book publications that Lee regularly produces on his films, and have found only one mention of a possible Brecht-Lee connection in the growing literature on the black director. Paul Gilroy, in a critique of Lee in the Washington Post (November 17, 1991), notes that like those of "Brecht, who has influenced him so much, 11 Lee's "loudly declared political commitments only end up trivializing the political reality at stake in his work and thereby diminishing its constructive political effect." But other than this (contestable)" state- ment, Gilroy and other critics have not yet explored Lee's appropria- tion of B!echt's aesthetic strategies. For a fuller presentation of Brecht's aesthetics and politics see Douglas Kellner, "Brecht's Marxist Aesthetic: The Korsh Connection," in Bertolt Brecht: Political Theory and Literary Practice, Betty Weber and Herbert Heinin, eds. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981), pp. 29-42.

7. See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1975), on "the writerly" modernist text that requires an active reader.

8. Fredric Jameson, in Signatures of the Visible (New York: Routledge, 1990) and Postmodemism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Dur- ham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), stresses the role of individual vision and style in modernism, while Peter Burger, in Theory of the

102 \ DOUGLAS KELLNER

Avant-Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974, repr. 1984), analyzes the "historical avant-garde" that attempts to change art and life, as opposed to more formalistically oriented modernist art.

9. This reading was suggested in conversation by Zygmunt Bauman after a series on postmodern film at the Summer 1992 10th Anni- versary. Conference, "Theory, Culture, & Society." In addition, Lee's DRT is read as a "postmodern" film in a somewhat indetenninate sense in Norman Denzin, Images of Postmodern Society (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Press, 1991), p. 125. Likewise, in "Spike Lee and the Commerce of Culture," in Black Cinema, Manthia Diawara, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1993), Houston A. Baker describes Lee in DRT as a "true postmodern" with an "astute, witty, brilliant critique of postmodern, urban hybridity," but without giving the term "postmodern" any substance. I will argue later that Lee basically grounds his politics and aesthetic strategies in modernist positions and is not in any important sense "postmodernist." (Baker's article is a reprint of an article of the same title in Black American Literature Forum 25:1 (Summer 1991]: 237-52.)

10. Of course, there are many postmodern politics, ranging from the nihilism of tjle post-1980s Jean Baudrillard to the pragmatic re- formism of Jean-Frarn;:ois Lyotard and Richard Rorty to the multi- culturalist identity politics of many women and minority group postmoderns; see the survey in Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory (New York: Macmillan and Guiford Press, 1991).

11. Denzin, Images of Postmodern Society, p. 125. 12. Here, Lee pays homage to the Robert Mitchum character in Night of

the Hunter, who was, however, quite evil; thus, Lee's appropriation of this symbolism perhaps inadvertently codes Raheem as more negative than Lee intended. In Spike Lee with Lisa Jones, Do the . Right Thing: A Spike Lee Joint (Simon & Schuster, 1989), Lee writes, "I want to pay homage to Night of the Hunter. You know those brass knuckle name rings that kids are wearing now? They're gold-plated and spread across four fingers. Radio Raheem will wear two of these. The one on his left hand will read 'L-O-V-E,' on his right, 'H-A-T-E,' just like Robert Mitchum's tattoos .... Radio Raheem tells Mookie a story about the rings that will be a variation on Robert Mitchum's tale of his tattoos. Vicious" (p. 78).

13. Lee indicates that he disapproves of African-American youth exhib- iting gold chains and the like ("They don't understand how worth- less that shit is in the long run"), but doesn't criticize this form of

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 103

consumerism in the film and in fact reinforces it in his cinematic images and capitalist ventures. For Lee's disclaimers, see Do the Right Thing, pp. 59 and 110.

14. Patterson, Spike Lee, p. 125. 15. Ibid. Here Patterson notes some criticisms of Lee's commercial ac-

tivity. 16. bell hooks, Yearning, Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (Boston:

South End Press, 1990), p. 179. hooks complains that a stuttering, inarticulate black youth is chosen to represent the prC>foundly intel- ligent and articulate views of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

17. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso Press, 1983).

18. Put differently, Lee's portrayal of racism does not take into account logical types - the fact that there is a hierarchy of racial virulence that is usually dictated by color (Blacks being subject to the most extreme racism, followed by Hispanics, Asians, and ethnics like Italians). Other hierarchies are those of gender (with women below men), sexual preference (with gays the object of heterosexuals' prejudice) and so on, such that black, lesbian women suffer signifi- cantly more oppression than, say, Hispanic men. The scene under question, however, portrays all forms of racism in terms of linguis- tic equivalence of cultural difference and racial hatred. (I am grate- ful to Rhonda Hammer for this insight.)

19. As Guerrero puts it in Framing Blackness: "By constructing Buggin' Out and Radio Raheem as supercilious and unreasonable characters, advocating the most effective social action instrument of the civil rights movement, the economic boycott, and then having the pos- sibility of social action dismissed by the neighborhood youth for the temporary pleasures of a good slice of pizza, the film trivializes any understanding of contemporary black political struggle, as well as the recent history of social movements in this country. This dismissal of collective action is further accented by contrasting Buggin' Out and Raheem with the character of Mookie, the film's calculating middle-man, positioned between Sal and the commu- nity. For it is through Mookie's aloof, individualist perspective that much of the film is rendered" (p. 149).

20. In interviews after the release of the film, Lee said that he was constantly amazed that people were indignant over the destruction of property, but that few of these people focused on the black youth's death. Lee was initially concerned to interrogate the condi- tions that could lead to the wanton killing of black youth, spurred

I 04 DOUGLAS KELLNER

on by the Howard Beach killings in which white youths gratu- itously assaulted some black youths, leading to one of their deaths. Thus, Lee seems to believe that violent protest is a legitimate re- sponse to the senseless killing of Blacks, as would, presumably, MalcolmX.

In his book Do the Right Thing, Lee remarks: "The character I play in Do the Right Thing is from the Malcolm X school of thought: 'An eye for an eye.' Fuck the tum-the-other-cheek shit. If we keep up that madness we'll be dead. YO, IT'S AN EYE FOR AN EYf/' (Lee's capitals; p. 34).

21. This reading was suggested by Kelly Oliver in a commeilt on an earlier draft of my essay. Indeed, as indicated in note 20, Lee was angry because many viewers and reviewers seemed very upset by the destruction of property, but overlooked the fact that a black youth was killed by the police.

22. In a throwaway line, Mookie's sister, Jade, mentions that she'd like to see something positive happen for the community, but it isn't clear what she has in mind and in the absence of a more complete development of her political views, one can only guess.

23. It is precisely this nihilism that Come! West warns Blacks against in "Nihilism in Black America," in Black Popular Culture, Gina Dent,_ ed. (Seattle: Bay Press, 1992), pp. 37-47.

24. Spike Lee with Ralph Wiley, By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of "Malcolm X" (New York: Hyperion, 1992), p. 5.

25. The reviews of Jungle Fever generally overlooked the fact that a good part of the film was spent attacking the crack scene, portraying it as a dead end and a major force of destruction in the black commu- nity. Lee avoided the issue of drugs, however, in his earlier films, for which he was criticized.

26. Brecht too was sympathetic to criminals and often presented _them favorably, as in the Three-Penny Opera. At times, they were op- pressed proletarians, though Brecht also used gangster figures to represent capitalists and fascists.

27. Although the narrative suggests that Malcolm was attracted to the white woman Sophia as · a means of exerting sexual power and gaining racial revenge, the relationship is more favorably presented than the interracial relationships in Jungle Fever, despite the fact that Malcolm X came to sharply condemn black men's pursuit of white women. I discuss Lee's controversial sexual politics later in this essay. ··, ·

28. The Nation of Islam, for instance, preached black superiority, pre-

AESTHETICS, ETHICS, AND POLITICS 105

sented the white man as a "devil,".and.in general engaged in racist teachings, advocating black separatism rather than structural social transformation. For some years, Malcolm X shared this perspective, but eventually distanced himself from it and developed more revo- lutionary and internationalist perspectives. See collections of Mal- colm X's later writings such as The Final Speeches _(New York: Path- finder Press, 1992).

29. Obviously, the question of historical accuracy is important in eval- uating a film that makes the pretense of telling the truth about Malcolm X's life. Lee's book on the making of the film indicates that he was attempting to · uncover the truth of Malcolm's life through research and interviews, so one could legitimately examine the film for its historical accuracy; such a project, however, goes beyond the scope of this essay. For some reflections on the histori- cal correctness and distortions of X, see the symposium in Cineaste 19:4 (1993): 5-18 and the review by bell hooks, "Malcolm X: Con- sumed by Images," Z Magazine (March 1993): 36-39.

30. There is some debate about this. See Kellner, "Brecht's Marxist Aesthetic," pp. 29-42.

31. Lee with Jones, Do the Right Thing, p. 30. 32. See Reid, Redefining Black Film, pp. 98-100. Reid discusses this scene

and its dramatization of class schisms within the African-American community.

33. Amiri Baraka, "Spike Lee at the Movies," in Black Cinema, p. 146. 34. hooks, Yearning, p. 173. 35. Michele Wallace, "Boyz N the Hood and Jungle Fever," in Black

Popular Culture, p. 129. 36. hooks, Yearning; Wallace, "Boyz N the Hood and Jungle Fever"; Guer-

rero, Framing Blackness; and Mark A. Reid, "The Brand X and Post- Negritude Frontier," Film Criticism 20:1-2 (Fall-Winter 1995-96): 17-25.

37. A curious set of images for interpreting Lee's sexual politics are found in the opening dance by Rosie Perez in Do the Right Thing. In Yearning, hooks notes how this dance replicates male behavior (male dance forms, boxing, fighting, etc.). But Lee possibly intends it to be a powerful image of a woman of color, since the dance is accompanied by the rap song "Fight the Power." It is a striking but ambiguous sequence, perhaps signaling the film's modernism, which requires viewers to construct their own readings.

38. For Brecht, a political learning play would impart exemplary politi- cal insights and behavior to its audience, helping to politicize them and incite them to participate in social change. It is not clear

I 06 DOUGLAS KELLNER

whether Lee's films function in this way or, as I am arguing, serve instead as black morality tales.

39. For two interesting discussions of this problem, see Adolph Reed, "The Trouble with X," Progressive (February 1993): 18-19, and Ba- raka, "Spike Lee at the Movies," p. 145.

40. Comel West, "A Matter of Life and Death," October 61 (Summer 1992): 20-27.

41. Reed, "The Trouble with X," p. 19. 42. hooks, Yearning, pp. 183-84. Also see the discussion of these issues

in bell hooks and Comel West, Breaking Bread (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1992).