Lee's education at New York University film school was financed by his grandmother. "She worked 50 years as a teacher and saved social security cheques for her grandchildrens' education," Lee says. "Think about that: her mother was a slave yet she was able to get a college degree and become a teacher!" Lee parallels this family story to Obama being elected: "I never thought I would see this happen in my lifetime … This was a revolutionary thing that's happened. I'm only four generations removed from slavery. When you think about it, that's like a finger snap … The White House was built by slaves, and now there is a black man living there … This is not just for the United States. This was for the world."
It would probably make Lee proud to know Barack Obama's first date with now-wife Michelle was going to see Do the Right Thing. But Lee is careful to insist we "don't drink the post-racial Kool-Aid bullshit. Because there's a black president everything is not all of a sudden alright." Lee is known for being outspoken and sometimes controversial when speaking about racial issues, including drawing flack for saying they "were not on a plantation" when condemning Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima for not portraying African-American soldiers. Conversely, Lee's latest film Miracle at St. Anna follows four black WWII soldiers.
According to Lee, it's media that specifically perpetuates inequality. He criticizes hip-hop culture and other portrayals of African Americans which "equate intelligence with acting white and ignorance with acting black. This is reinforced through film, through music videos, through TV shows, through rap … For me that is criminal."
"Society: you can really look at it through film and television," adds Lee. "You always need a boogie man." Lee cites the vilification of emancipated slaves in early films like Birth of a Nation, of Native Americans in Westerns, then film portrayals of Germans and Japanese during the second world war and later Soviets and the Viet Cong, as examples of negative stereotyping. "And now if you look at Hollywood, you look at 24 and all these other TV shows and movies, the dangerous thing is that they equate terrorists with Arabs." Lee satirizes this in Inside Man, when a turbanned Sikh is presumed dangerous in a harrowing scene. "Bombs do not influence how you think," Lee reminds the crowd. "Culture does."
Be the first to comment on this story