Spike Lee's Blackkklansman

Have you noticed there haven't been  many  fictional films about Donald Trump's rein as President except Spike Lee's  BLACKKKLANSMAN? And then again,  some viewers may say it's not really about Trump at all.  Maybe because not many people saw the movie in the first place.

     I, for one, am glad I did see it. Why? Because  I can maybe now tell which side Lee is on: white or black. It always frustrated me that I didn't really know if this provocative and excellent director preferred to sit on the fence instead. Was it even possible he was not on anyone's side, that both whites and blacks were equally unsympathetic  and unlikable? Or, sympathetic and likable? 

     I have been trying to answer that question whenever I see Lee's movie, "Do the Right Thing" ( 1989 ): questioning his motives when one character Mookie ( played by Lee himself ) throws a trash can through the window of Sal's Pizzeria, thus starting a riot among the  races in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood. There's no doubt that the people who live there are  a mixed bag: individuals we respect, like Mother Sister ( Ruby Dee), Da Mayor ( Ossie Davis ), and Mookie's sister ( Lee's real sibbling ) as well as characters we feel are trouble makers and  self-serving, including Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito ) and Sal (Danny Aiello).

     What did Lee really think about the races? Were the blacks or whites at fault for the death of a black man in the neighborhood? Were both groups  to blame? Would the situation get better? The film's last shot suggests that things would go on as usual. Nothing would change  as people went about their way. Text positioned under the photographs of Martin Luther King and  Malcolm X  after this last image infers two opposing sides of our country's future: we can follow non-violence (King ) or self-protection  ( Malcolm X ).

     Black and white characters and circumstances in Lee's "Jungle Fever" are similarly ambiguous. A black architect ( Wesley Snipes ) and his white assistant ( Annabella Sciorra are decent, sincere and in love,  although we feel sorry for Sciorra; yet  her selfish Italian family are just as closed-minded as Snipes' father ( Ossie Davis ). While the relationship goes badly, we still hope for the best. Of course, we are also  pulling for Snipes and his wife, too.  Again, we feel sympathy for nearly all the characters, no matter what their race or flaws.

     This same ambivalence appears to exist toward the characters in "Blackkklansman." We admire Ron Stallworth  ( John David  Washington ) who becomes the first black cop ( in the early 1970's ) to join the Colorado Springs Police Department. Yet we want him to be stronger in his resolve against his white racist colleagues. We want him to show that he cares more for the Black Student Union  than he seemingly does. In a word, we want him to get off the fence by taking a side. The same is true of his white partner Flip ( Adam Driver ) who is Jewish but doesn't seem to care that much. His distaste for the Ku Klux Klan  seems a bit tepid.

    Regardless of the main characters' lukewarm behavior toward their adversaries,  the audience itself has no respect for the Ku Klux Klan, only disdain for their extreme stupidity and  bad deeds. Even though we may feel a tinge of sympathy for a Klansman wife ( Connie ), we only laugh at her humiliation. This feeling toward a white group is one of the strongest Lee has presented in any of his films ( in my memory, at least ). By the time we get to the film's closing of news footage from Charlottesville, Virginia,  showing a White  Supremacy Group, we are livid. From the 1970's to 2017, not much has changed, just like the conclusion of "Do the Right Thing." 

     That may be Lee's main theme. Yet there's another one. We can't forget the footage of Donald Trump also in the closing montage. Now that's someone else we can hate besides the Klan.