Extract

In this final chapter I explore how Lee’s films may or may not have changed as he progressively became more incorporated within the mainstream film industry. In addition, I discuss Lee’s career in relation to larger issues related to the possibilities of counter-hegemonic cultural production within the mainstream film industry. It is perhaps the case that much of the public perception of Lee as an oppositional media figure (see Lubiano, 2008) is based on impressions formed during the initial stages of his emergence as a media figure, and that as he has become a successful player in the Hollywood milieu the ideological and political subtexts of his films have become increasingly mainstreamed. This is what Lyne argued in 2000 when he posited that Lee is able to “make peace with the corporate power structure while maintaining a veneer of militant dissent” (p. 45).

Thus, as I set out to examine Lee’s work one of the central questions I was interested in exploring is whether a chronological analysis of Lee’s career reveals any significant ideological shifts as he moved from a position of independence to one of incorporation. After all, Watkins has pointed out:

Occasionally, studio executives find it necessary to cut a scene, rephrase a piece of dialogue, or alter some other element considered too risky. This filtering process is an example of how the creative process is routinely purified by industry gatekeepers as ← 175 | 176 →a means of staying within the normative boundaries of dominant...