![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
On Propaganda and "BlacKKKlansman"
Aug. 20th, 2018 09:22 amSpike Lee's new movie, "BlacKKKlansman," ostensibly works on two levels. On the surface, it's the story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the first black officer in the Colorado Springs police department and his astonishingly successful infiltration of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1970s.
However, if you examine the movie closely, there's really not much dramatic heft in (Lee's version of) Stallworth's story. After undercover rookie cop Stallworth attends a speech by Kwame Ture (the former Stokely Carmichael), he has a spiritual awakening and dedicates himself to helping the black cause from inside the system. And that's basically it for character development. Stallworth never really questions his choice of career--in fact, we never get much of an explanation why he always wanted to be a cop--and it's more how everybody else, especially his more radical girlfriend, adjusts to his double life.
There is also a tantalizing subplot with the Jewish cop (Adam Driver) helping Stallworth with his scam, who's also having a problem reconciling his ethnic identity with palling around with the Klan. But, again, we just get a taste of Flip Zimmerman's internal conflict before it's subsumed by undercover hijinks. (For a more detailed look about a Jewish cop dealing with the same issues, see David Mamet's "Homicide.")
Lee has a broader target to hit. Stallworth's story is the perfect vehicle to dismantle the iconography (shown in clips from "Gone with the Wind" and "Birth of a Nation") that undergirds the Klan and white racism in general: the so-called genetic superiority of the white race; the portrayal of blacks as dull and lazy and filled with lustful thoughts about white women; and how black people are the lackeys of the international Jewish conspiracy.
Lee gleefully inverts every piece of Klan propaganda. The Klan members are almost uniformly dull and stupid, outfoxed by Stallworth at every turn; Peter Weller's racist cop lustfully frisks Stallworth's lady friend, Patrice; and Lee goes out of his way (maybe a little too far out of his way) to steer the plot to the climax, where the "virtuous" white woman is the menace, and the black man preserves the welfare of the community.
Woodrow Wilson once infamously said that "Birth of a Nation" was "history written by lightning." Lee has spent most of his career trying to counter D.W. Griffith's film with lightning of his own. "BlacKKKlansman" is counter-propaganda, a rousing call to arms against a racism that still holds too much sway in American life. It's a worthy goal... and yet, I can't help but wonder if the best path to that goal is more propaganda.
***************
In art, propaganda is the death of drama.
Drama is the exploration of two opposing viewpoints, each given room to tell its story in full; propaganda flattens one side of the argument, reducing the opposition to two dimensions, never seeing the viewpoint's representatives as human beings. It is reductive by nature and suppresses thought. Even if you agree with the propagandist, painting the opposition as a cartoon deadens your sense of empathy, or worse, hinders your ability to understand the opposing point of view, and (perhaps) your ability to fight it effectively.
For this reason, my hackles go up whenever I see a work of propaganda, even if I basically agree with the artist. That's almost always been the case with Spike Lee. He's one of best film makers in America, always has been, but he's always been two parts propagandist and one part dramatist and he's never been what you'd call "subtle."
[GIF of Keenan Ivory Wayans walking onto screen, facing the camera, shouting "Message!", then walking off screen....]
A large part of this movie is hanging out with the Colorado Springs chapter of the KKK, and it's just unpleasant to sit through. Not just because they're racist pieces of shit, but because they're redneck caricatures, barely human. You have psychobilly Felix and his 1950s homemaker grotesquerie of a wife; a bloated cracker buffoon who practically drools whenever he's on screen; and Grand Wizard David Duke himself--who, incredibly, doesn't project the slightest hint of charisma or gravitas. (Admittedly, the role might've been too much for Topher Grace to handle.)
It is possible to portray racists on screen and make them viable characters despite holding repugnant views. The danger of presenting them as clowns is that not taking them seriously doesn't make them any less dangerous. Lee ends the film with footage from the white racist rally in Charlottesville a year ago, and when David Duke--the REAL David Duke, not Grace's gullible goon--appears on screen, he is as serious as death.
The best parts of "BlacKKKlansman" are when Lee hangs back and lets the characters tell their stories. The tale of the lynching of a black man juxtaposed with the Klan initiation rite is devastatingly effective, because Lee doesn't intrude on either one. And when Stallworth picks up shells after a Klan round of target practice, the reveal of those targets says more in one image than all the editorializing in the world...
However, if you examine the movie closely, there's really not much dramatic heft in (Lee's version of) Stallworth's story. After undercover rookie cop Stallworth attends a speech by Kwame Ture (the former Stokely Carmichael), he has a spiritual awakening and dedicates himself to helping the black cause from inside the system. And that's basically it for character development. Stallworth never really questions his choice of career--in fact, we never get much of an explanation why he always wanted to be a cop--and it's more how everybody else, especially his more radical girlfriend, adjusts to his double life.
There is also a tantalizing subplot with the Jewish cop (Adam Driver) helping Stallworth with his scam, who's also having a problem reconciling his ethnic identity with palling around with the Klan. But, again, we just get a taste of Flip Zimmerman's internal conflict before it's subsumed by undercover hijinks. (For a more detailed look about a Jewish cop dealing with the same issues, see David Mamet's "Homicide.")
Lee has a broader target to hit. Stallworth's story is the perfect vehicle to dismantle the iconography (shown in clips from "Gone with the Wind" and "Birth of a Nation") that undergirds the Klan and white racism in general: the so-called genetic superiority of the white race; the portrayal of blacks as dull and lazy and filled with lustful thoughts about white women; and how black people are the lackeys of the international Jewish conspiracy.
Lee gleefully inverts every piece of Klan propaganda. The Klan members are almost uniformly dull and stupid, outfoxed by Stallworth at every turn; Peter Weller's racist cop lustfully frisks Stallworth's lady friend, Patrice; and Lee goes out of his way (maybe a little too far out of his way) to steer the plot to the climax, where the "virtuous" white woman is the menace, and the black man preserves the welfare of the community.
Woodrow Wilson once infamously said that "Birth of a Nation" was "history written by lightning." Lee has spent most of his career trying to counter D.W. Griffith's film with lightning of his own. "BlacKKKlansman" is counter-propaganda, a rousing call to arms against a racism that still holds too much sway in American life. It's a worthy goal... and yet, I can't help but wonder if the best path to that goal is more propaganda.
***************
In art, propaganda is the death of drama.
Drama is the exploration of two opposing viewpoints, each given room to tell its story in full; propaganda flattens one side of the argument, reducing the opposition to two dimensions, never seeing the viewpoint's representatives as human beings. It is reductive by nature and suppresses thought. Even if you agree with the propagandist, painting the opposition as a cartoon deadens your sense of empathy, or worse, hinders your ability to understand the opposing point of view, and (perhaps) your ability to fight it effectively.
For this reason, my hackles go up whenever I see a work of propaganda, even if I basically agree with the artist. That's almost always been the case with Spike Lee. He's one of best film makers in America, always has been, but he's always been two parts propagandist and one part dramatist and he's never been what you'd call "subtle."
[GIF of Keenan Ivory Wayans walking onto screen, facing the camera, shouting "Message!", then walking off screen....]
A large part of this movie is hanging out with the Colorado Springs chapter of the KKK, and it's just unpleasant to sit through. Not just because they're racist pieces of shit, but because they're redneck caricatures, barely human. You have psychobilly Felix and his 1950s homemaker grotesquerie of a wife; a bloated cracker buffoon who practically drools whenever he's on screen; and Grand Wizard David Duke himself--who, incredibly, doesn't project the slightest hint of charisma or gravitas. (Admittedly, the role might've been too much for Topher Grace to handle.)
It is possible to portray racists on screen and make them viable characters despite holding repugnant views. The danger of presenting them as clowns is that not taking them seriously doesn't make them any less dangerous. Lee ends the film with footage from the white racist rally in Charlottesville a year ago, and when David Duke--the REAL David Duke, not Grace's gullible goon--appears on screen, he is as serious as death.
The best parts of "BlacKKKlansman" are when Lee hangs back and lets the characters tell their stories. The tale of the lynching of a black man juxtaposed with the Klan initiation rite is devastatingly effective, because Lee doesn't intrude on either one. And when Stallworth picks up shells after a Klan round of target practice, the reveal of those targets says more in one image than all the editorializing in the world...
