Last weekend, I went to an open air cinema to watch Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. I had heard nothing about the film, except for a rather vague explanation from my brother who was watching the film with me, and was frankly slightly apprehensive about watching the movie. The reason simply being that it’s not usually the style of film I would watch.
BlacKkKlansman, a modern age Blaxploitation style film, is a telling of the real life (“based upon some fo’ real, fo’ real shit”) infiltration of the Klu Klux Klan by an African American cop, Ron Stallworth (played impeccably by John David Washington) in the early 70s. The film is closely based on the memoir of Ron Stallworth, the first African American police office in the Colorado Springs department.
Along with the stereotypical presentation of black ethnic characters, blaxploitation films from the 60s and 70s were inspired by and deal intimately with issues of racial pride and Black Power. Lee’s BlacKkKlansman is no different, taking the look and feel of blaxploitation style films to centre stage. However, when walking in, all I expecting was being subjected to two and a bit hours of cringe humour.
What I got was in fact a dramedy that flashes quickly between often over-the-top, and, yes, slightly cringe, humour to extremely poignant revelations of race relations, that is traumatisingly too familiar to the 21st century audience.
And I loved every minute of it.
“All the power to all the people!”
This repeated proclamation is left ringing in your ears after the credits start rolling on Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. An American film director, producer, writer and actor, Lee has been known to push controversial movies onto the Hollywood scene.
The art scene is heavily focused these days on addressing the political and social disruption that has characterized the past half-decade. Real life has always been a source of inspiration to artists and writers, nothing about that is new. What is new, or rather I could say, old, is just how familiar the issues on race and discrimination we face today is. We’ve seen this happen before, and we’re supposed to be passed it.
It is exactly this theme that BlacKkKlansman deals with. Though set in the 1970s, the litany of phrases spoken by the white supremacists in the movie that urges to put “America first” and “great again” is an overt jab at what can be heard in politics today. And not just in the United States, though it is the basis of the film. In the United Kingdom, the Brexit movement similarly inspired a surge of xenophobic attitude which played out in the image of national pride.
Topher Grace, who plays David Duke the real Grand Wizard of the KKK organisation, spoke about how the movie “gets more and more timely with every second that passes, sadly. This film shouldn’t be more timely now than when it takes place, but unfortunately it is.”
This film shouldn’t be more timely now than when it takes place, but unfortunately it is.
Central to the film is the theme of duality. Past and present merge, just like Stallworth is forced to be two people at once – a police officer in an all white precinct and a African American who wants to be racially proud. Similarly, when he infiltrates the KKK and oversees his Jewish colleague Flip Zimmerman (played by Adam Driver) as he meets with the KKK as Ron Stallworth, he again has to be both white and black Ron Stallworth. Moreover, Stallworth’s relationship with black student activist, Patricia, often found talking about the liberation of the black people, is mirrored by white supremist, Felix and his wife cuddling while plotting murder.
What should be solely a fictional and humorous retelling of a (not so) bygone era of ludicrous institutionalised racism turns into an eye-opening revelation of how far we have yet to go.
What should be solely a fictional and humorous retelling of a (not so) bygone era of ludicrous institutionalised racism turns into an eye-opening revelation of how far we have yet to go. Lee blends past and present tactfully as Stallworth is at times criticised for his naivety, claiming someone like Duke who argues for a politics that puts “America first” could never be in the White House. But Lee does not hold back on account of subtly. The movie’s end presents footage of the horrors that occured in Charlottesville in 2017, and the shameful and shocking response from Trump in the light of Neo-Nazi attacks, claiming “blame on both sides”.
While the majority of the film uses wit and humour to address the likeness of the past to the present, Lee’s use of the footage makes a clear declaration: The time for subtly is over, we must be loud and unapologetic in our condemnation of discrimination. Point a movie-shaped finger directly at the US president makes it clear to audience that something needs to be done.
~S~
Image Credits:
1. Credit: rottentomatoes.com
2. Credit: Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock. Spike Lee
2018 Chanel Tribeca Film Festival Artists Dinner, New York, USA – 23 Apr 2018
