The Spike Lee Enigma
Challenge and Incorporation in Media Culture
Bill Yousman
This book incorporates multiple perspectives, ranging from media effects theories, critical cultural studies, and the political economy of media, to semiotics and ideological, auteurist, and feminist approaches to film theory and analysis. Early chapters provide a clear explanation of these theoretical and methodological approaches while later chapters explore several of Lee’s films in great depth. In a social environment where popular culture has supplanted education and religion as a primary force of socialization and enculturation, this book demonstrates why a popular filmmaker such as Spike Lee must be taken seriously, while introducing readers to ways of viewing, reading, and listening that will allow them to achieve a new understanding of the mediated texts they encounter on a daily basis.
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- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2014. 241 pp.
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Media Saturation and Media Culture
- Questioning Spike Lee
- Overview of Subsequent Chapters
- Chapter 2: The American Film Industry, Race, and Spike Lee
- Development of the American Film Industry
- Black Filmmakers and the American Film Industry
- Black Stereotypes in American Film
- Black Independent Cinema
- The Emergence of Spike Lee
- Popular and Academic Reception of Lee’s Films
- Artistic and Cultural Merit
- Representing Race, Class, and Gender
- Lee’s Political Agenda
- Chapter 3: Theory and Method: Media Culture, Ideology, and Spike Lee
- Mass Society and Mass Media
- Contesting Paradigms I: Media Effects and Critical Theory
- Media Effects
- Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School
- Contesting Paradigms II: Critical Theory and Cultural Studies
- Limitations of the Frankfurt School Approach
- British Cultural Studies
- Celebratory Cultural Studies
- Contesting Paradigms III: Cultural Studies and Political Economy
- Origins of Ideology
- Marxist Perspectives on Ideology
- Althusser on Ideology
- Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony
- Mainstream, Alternative, and Oppositional Media
- Mainstream Media
- Alternative Media
- Oppositional Media
- Applying Critical Theory to the Films of Spike Lee
- Why These Films?
- Critical Film Theory
- Semiotics and Structuralism in Film Studies
- Methods of Ideological Analysis and Spike Lee
- Chapter 4: She’s Gotta Have It, but He Already Got It
- Production Background
- Narrative Structure
- The Beginning
- The Middle
- The End
- Coda
- Critical Reception
- Analysis of Structural Oppositions in She’s Gotta Have It
- Men/Women and the Privileges of Gender
- Defining Morality/Immorality—Enculturation Through Modern Myth
- Chapter 5: The Undecidability of Doing the Right Thing
- Production Background
- Film Narrative
- Critical Reception
- Structural Semiotic Analysis of Do the Right Thing
- Indeterminacy—Complex Moral and Ideological Positions in Do the Right Thing
- Harmony/Discord
- Ideological Choices and Contradictions in Do the Right Thing
- Male Agency/Female Spectatorship—A Continuing Theme
- Chapter 6: Lee Goes Big: Identity and Ideology in the Epic Malcolm X
- Production Background
- Narrative Structure
- Part One—Detroit Red
- Part Two—Malcolm X
- Part Three—El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
- Coda
- Critical Reception
- Structural Analysis of Malcolm X
- Identity—Detroit Red/Malcolm Little
- Identity—Malcolm X/Detroit Red
- Identity—Malcolm X/El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
- Hollywood Iconography—Race and Ethnicity
- Hollywood Iconography—Gender and Sexuality
- The Invisible Dimension—Class and Class Consciousness
- Chapter 7: Spike Lee and the Paradox of the Alternative Mainstream
- Gender and Sexuality—Spike Lee’s Marginal Women, Violent Men, and Repulsive Gays
- Race and Racism—“Us vs. Them”
- Class Struggle—The Missing Dimension
- Spike Lee—Advertising Man
- Chapter 8: The Mainstreaming (?) of Spike Lee: Challenge and Incorporation
- Challenge and Incorporation
- The Conservative Tendencies of Media Culture and the Marginalization of Dissenting Voices
- Afterword
- Notes
- References
- Index
Chapter 5: The Undecidability of Doing the Right Thing
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← 88 | 89 →·5·
Extract
Spike Lee’s third commercial feature, Do the Right Thing (1989), is considered by many to be his masterpiece. In fact, it could be argued that Lee’s reputation as a filmmaker has, over the years, suffered because he created his most enduring work so early in his career. Do the Right Thing is Lee’s most controversial and most important work, a film that is still challenging and provocative, a film that warrants continued discussion, debate, and analysis (Finnegan, 2011; Guerrero, 2001; Patterson, 1992; Reid, 1997; Sklar, 1990). Guerrero has noted “Do the Right Thing came to spark more media attention and critical debate than any other film in the history of black American film-making…” (2001, p. 17). Journalists claimed that Do the Right Thing was prophetic in its anticipation of the post-Rodney King civil disturbances of 1992 (MacCambridge, 1992). Television programs like The Oprah Winfrey Show and Nightline featured entire episodes on the significance of this film (Guerrero, 2001). Lee’s screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award and the film garnered the Best Director and Best Picture Awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. This film was also the first commercial production by Lee that directly confronted issues of white racism. At the time of its release Lee called the film his most political work up to that point. Do the Right Thing’s unflinching representation of racial violence generated a considerable amount ← 89 | 90 →of attention from the popular press. During the five months subsequent to the film’s release over...
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Or login to access all content.- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Media Saturation and Media Culture
- Questioning Spike Lee
- Overview of Subsequent Chapters
- Chapter 2: The American Film Industry, Race, and Spike Lee
- Development of the American Film Industry
- Black Filmmakers and the American Film Industry
- Black Stereotypes in American Film
- Black Independent Cinema
- The Emergence of Spike Lee
- Popular and Academic Reception of Lee’s Films
- Artistic and Cultural Merit
- Representing Race, Class, and Gender
- Lee’s Political Agenda
- Chapter 3: Theory and Method: Media Culture, Ideology, and Spike Lee
- Mass Society and Mass Media
- Contesting Paradigms I: Media Effects and Critical Theory
- Media Effects
- Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School
- Contesting Paradigms II: Critical Theory and Cultural Studies
- Limitations of the Frankfurt School Approach
- British Cultural Studies
- Celebratory Cultural Studies
- Contesting Paradigms III: Cultural Studies and Political Economy
- Origins of Ideology
- Marxist Perspectives on Ideology
- Althusser on Ideology
- Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony
- Mainstream, Alternative, and Oppositional Media
- Mainstream Media
- Alternative Media
- Oppositional Media
- Applying Critical Theory to the Films of Spike Lee
- Why These Films?
- Critical Film Theory
- Semiotics and Structuralism in Film Studies
- Methods of Ideological Analysis and Spike Lee
- Chapter 4: She’s Gotta Have It, but He Already Got It
- Production Background
- Narrative Structure
- The Beginning
- The Middle
- The End
- Coda
- Critical Reception
- Analysis of Structural Oppositions in She’s Gotta Have It
- Men/Women and the Privileges of Gender
- Defining Morality/Immorality—Enculturation Through Modern Myth
- Chapter 5: The Undecidability of Doing the Right Thing
- Production Background
- Film Narrative
- Critical Reception
- Structural Semiotic Analysis of Do the Right Thing
- Indeterminacy—Complex Moral and Ideological Positions in Do the Right Thing
- Harmony/Discord
- Ideological Choices and Contradictions in Do the Right Thing
- Male Agency/Female Spectatorship—A Continuing Theme
- Chapter 6: Lee Goes Big: Identity and Ideology in the Epic Malcolm X
- Production Background
- Narrative Structure
- Part One—Detroit Red
- Part Two—Malcolm X
- Part Three—El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
- Coda
- Critical Reception
- Structural Analysis of Malcolm X
- Identity—Detroit Red/Malcolm Little
- Identity—Malcolm X/Detroit Red
- Identity—Malcolm X/El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
- Hollywood Iconography—Race and Ethnicity
- Hollywood Iconography—Gender and Sexuality
- The Invisible Dimension—Class and Class Consciousness
- Chapter 7: Spike Lee and the Paradox of the Alternative Mainstream
- Gender and Sexuality—Spike Lee’s Marginal Women, Violent Men, and Repulsive Gays
- Race and Racism—“Us vs. Them”
- Class Struggle—The Missing Dimension
- Spike Lee—Advertising Man
- Chapter 8: The Mainstreaming (?) of Spike Lee: Challenge and Incorporation
- Challenge and Incorporation
- The Conservative Tendencies of Media Culture and the Marginalization of Dissenting Voices
- Afterword
- Notes
- References
- Index