There's a scene in BlacKkKlansman, the 2018 film directed by Spike Lee (or, I should say a 'Spike Lee joint') wherein a policeman, the station sergeant, explains to Colorado Springs' first black officer that the Klan has changed the way it does business. For one thing, they don't call themselves 'the Klan' in public. They call themselves 'The Organization'. They call themselves 'Nationalists'. They operate legally, in the public view anyway, obtaining permits for speaking events and so on, legitimizing their ideology, step-by-step, in the public eye. They exert political and social influence through the customary channels and they promulgate their hatred in the guise of patriotism and pride. You wait and see, the sergeant says. One of these days we'll have an American president who is an outright racist.
And so here we are.
BlacKkKlansman is set in the 1970s and is based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, Colorado Springs' first black police officer. Tired of being marginalized at the station, kept generally out of the way in the back rooms, Stallworth takes it upon himself to make a call to the local KuKluxKlan representative, posing as a violently racist applicant to the ranks. A bit of a problem arises, of course, when Stallworth is invited to meet with the Klan, for while he can play the part of a racist, he cannot change the color of his skin.
Stallworth brings a plan to the department. A white partner--Jewish, incidentally--will learn first to imitate Stallworth's vocal patterns and will then, posing as Stallworth, infiltrate the 'organization', with Stallworth on the outside as support and backup.
The most admirable thing about Spike Lee has always been his willingness to be perfectly blunt, sparing no-one and bowing to no PC rulebook. As he unfolds Stallworth's story and examines the police code, the Black Panthers, Stokely Carmichael, the Klan, racism itself, we see that there is more than a sufficient amount of bullshit to go around. Simplistic thinking, rigid, self-serving responses rule the day. One extreme is met by another, and the casualty is common humanity. The members of each group, at some point in the film, speak of the concept of 'family'--the law enforcement family, the brotherhood of blacks, the white pride of the Klan--each family needing its nemesis for its own cohesion--the niggers, the pigs, the kikes, the honkeys, the faggots, the Mexicans, and so on. Hatred, ultimately, is the bond that unites them. Under the influence of an extremist leader--Carmichael, David Duke, rap culture, Donald Trump--hatred is focused, galvanized, legitimized. The notion of family itself is grotesquely corrupted and ends in the demand for violence to others in order to preserve relationship within the chosen family.
Although BlacKkKlansman is billed as a comedy/drama, it is, at best, only very darkly funny. Like most of Spike Lee's films, it is in-your-face' honest. And that's what I like, both about Lee and about this movie.
And so here we are.
BlacKkKlansman is set in the 1970s and is based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, Colorado Springs' first black police officer. Tired of being marginalized at the station, kept generally out of the way in the back rooms, Stallworth takes it upon himself to make a call to the local KuKluxKlan representative, posing as a violently racist applicant to the ranks. A bit of a problem arises, of course, when Stallworth is invited to meet with the Klan, for while he can play the part of a racist, he cannot change the color of his skin.
Stallworth brings a plan to the department. A white partner--Jewish, incidentally--will learn first to imitate Stallworth's vocal patterns and will then, posing as Stallworth, infiltrate the 'organization', with Stallworth on the outside as support and backup.
The most admirable thing about Spike Lee has always been his willingness to be perfectly blunt, sparing no-one and bowing to no PC rulebook. As he unfolds Stallworth's story and examines the police code, the Black Panthers, Stokely Carmichael, the Klan, racism itself, we see that there is more than a sufficient amount of bullshit to go around. Simplistic thinking, rigid, self-serving responses rule the day. One extreme is met by another, and the casualty is common humanity. The members of each group, at some point in the film, speak of the concept of 'family'--the law enforcement family, the brotherhood of blacks, the white pride of the Klan--each family needing its nemesis for its own cohesion--the niggers, the pigs, the kikes, the honkeys, the faggots, the Mexicans, and so on. Hatred, ultimately, is the bond that unites them. Under the influence of an extremist leader--Carmichael, David Duke, rap culture, Donald Trump--hatred is focused, galvanized, legitimized. The notion of family itself is grotesquely corrupted and ends in the demand for violence to others in order to preserve relationship within the chosen family.
Although BlacKkKlansman is billed as a comedy/drama, it is, at best, only very darkly funny. Like most of Spike Lee's films, it is in-your-face' honest. And that's what I like, both about Lee and about this movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment