Spike Lee hits a nerve

By Brittany Andrews
Staff Writer

For many who attended the Spike Lee event, Feb. 2, it was a memorable occasion but for others it was an infuriating experience. Issues of race are a touchy subject even on a campus as diverse as UNCP. Certain topics remain taboo, especially the ones Spike Lee touched on.

He pointed out that the recently released movie, Cold Mountain, supposedly based on the book highlights the “love story” of the characters portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, putting slavery as a backdrop rather than presenting as an important issue of the time period of the movie. Lee also pointed out that the character played by Renee Zellweger was black not white in the original book.

He continued that if it were a “love story” about Nazis in which Jude Law was a Nazi soldier stuck behind Allied lines and Nicole Kidman a Nazi supporter in love with him, the film would not have been made.

Later Lee goes on to claim that blacks are still in a “ghetto” when it comes to their portrayals in film. They go from “broad comedies to hip-hop drug movies to broad comedies.” He gave an example of a comedy that he enjoyed with the exception of two comments that he found very offensive in the movie, Barbershop where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a “hoe” and Rosa Parks was too “lazy” to get off her butt. This example said shows “the media is slick; today racism is sophisticated,” and explains that not only can it be blunt but very subtle.

Lee also criticized cinematic heroes such as John Ford and John Wayne’s racist sentiments and even famous historical figures George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for their ownership of slaves.

The speech came to a head when Lee referred to the black male characters in films such as The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Green Mile as having “super duper mystical magical black powers,” stating that the only time these “magic powers” could be used were to help the white characters in the movie instead of being able to use these powers to help themselves get out of their current situation, thus reinforcing the idea of the “happy slave.”

The speech generated comments from both blacks and whites. One white student member of UNCP’s College Republicans said that sometimes whites are portrayed negatively in films with a predominantly black cast. They are nerds, weird, goofballs and on occasion extremely insensitive to minorities.

This pales in comparison to the negative images of blacks in film but does show a double standard. Blacks say it is wrong for whites to portray blacks as criminals, uneducated, and inferior to whites, yet whites are sometimes stereotyped by blacks in film. A person with common sense and who values equality would see there is a double standard.

The solution to this problem is that all races need to put away ridiculous stereotypes and at the same time be able to recognize that stereotypes are just that-- ridiculous and should not be taken seriously.