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
Afterword
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← 212 | 213 →AFTERWORD
Extract
In the summer of 2013 Spike Lee was once again trying to raise funds for a new project. This time, however, innovations in digital technology and culture provided him with a new way to generate financial support.
Kickstarter is a web-based platform for crowd-funding, enabling filmmakers, artists, musicians, writers, designers, and others to solicit small donations that can potentially add up to large sums of money. Initially meant for independent artists and non-profit organizations, by 2013 mainstream film producers were using Kickstarter to supplement their studio funding. For the big screen version of a network television series, Veronica Mars, for example, producers raised almost six million dollars through Kickstarter, despite the involvement of one of the world’s largest media companies, Warner Brothers, as the film’s distributor.
Lee started a Kickstarter campaign in 2013 to raise money for an untitled project. Setting a goal of 1.25 million dollars, Lee managed to surpass that, raising over 1.4 million from 6,421 backers. On the Kickstarter website Lee anticipated questions about why an established filmmaker would need donations from fans. Lee posted:
I’m an Indie Filmmaker and I will always be an Indie Filmmaker. Indie Filmmakers are always in search of financing because their work, their vision sometimes does not ← 213 | 214 →coincide with Studio Pictures. But I do put my own money in my films. I self-financed RED HOOK SUMMER. My fee for MALCOLM X was put back into the budget. The truth is I’ve been...
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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