Inter/Intra-racism Black Female Sexuality Biography/Documentary School Daze (1988) She’s Gotta Have It (1986) Malcolm X (1992) Do The Right Thing (1989) Girl 6 (1996) Crooklyn (1994) Jungle Fever (1991) She Hate Me (2004) 4 Little Girls (1997) Get on the Bus (1996) Jim Brown All American Summer of Sam (1999) (2002) Bamboozled (2000) Family/Father & Miscellaneous Relationship Mo’ Better Blues (1990) Crooklyn (1994) Clockers (1995) Get on the Bus (1996) The Original Kings of He Got Game (1998) Comedy (2000) 25th Hour (2002)

SUCCESS

Spike Lee misses at the Box Office Todd Boyd, Associate Professor at USC: His movies are the same as they were in the beginning. Nelson George, Pop culture writer: Reviews of Lee’s films are filled with recurring themes: Lee’s endings don’t satisfy; his films are didactic. Jones, Vanessa E. “Spike Lee: Right on Time,” New York Times. 13 January, 2003: Lee is a victim of an industry he helped transform. Steve Persall, Times Film Critic: Some people don’t want to hear what Spike Lee has to say, much like Bill Cosby’s recent rebukes.

Forty Acres and a Mule General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, January 16, President Andrew Jackson rescinds bill 40 Acres and a Mule today

MAKING WAVES He further turned the industry on its head by making movies with Black-centered themes and with African American actors and staff. "40 Acres and a Mule" has also come to represent resistance to racial injustice perpetrated against Blacks. For example, just as freedmen wanted forty acres and a mule, in Do The Right Thing, Buggin' Out wants Black pictures on the wall in Sal's Famous Pizzeria."40 Acres and a Mule" is also a critical reflection on those Blacks who fail to use the opportunities given to them or who misuse them.

Spike’s Gotta Have It 1986 Cannes Film Festival Award of the Youth, Spike Lee; Foreign Film Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, Spike Lee; New Generation Award 1987 Independent Spirit Awards, Spike Lee; Best First Feature

Race Politics in Film Film has long been fascinated by the history of race relations; why? Provides conflict, opportunity for underdog following just cause to overcome adversity Favorable to either Whites of Blacks Often an venue for the perpetuation of negative stereotypes D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind, etc.

Do the Right Thing Intended as a wake-up call to America (note Samuel Jackson at beginning) Lee wanted to expose the racial tensions simmering underneath the placid appearance of race relations in the U.S. Why does this take place on the hottest day of summer? Do African-Americans have complete equality in politics and society? What is necessary to bridge the gap between races? Lee argues that both sides need to overcome their stereotypical preconceptions How does he try to facilitate that process in this film?

Dialectical Form Film is a constant play of opposite messages clashing against one another In 1920s, Sergei Eisenstein, inspired by Marx, created cinema involving a constant juxtaposition of opposites (thesis and antithesis) with the goal of creating a new synthesis or higher consciousness Lee wanted to liberate audience from fixed stereotypical images of the conflict between black and white Americans and open their minds to the more subtle awareness of racism in American society and the danger that racism poses to us all; does he do this?

Dialectical Cinematography Eisenstein wrote, “Absolute realism is by no means the correct form of expression” What did he mean by this? The greater the disparity between expected proportions and the artist’s deviations, the greater the emotional power How is this done with extreme camera angles? Da Mayor and Mother Sister, Radio Raheem