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John "Pop-a-Boner" Greyson

A hybrid video essay by Lia MacKinnon

Groundwork

Since the very beginning, cinema has been used not only as a vehicle for entertainment but as a means to push narratives. However, early cinema was expensive and difficult to produce. This would of course all change from the late 1960s through the 1980s with the advent of affordable and easy-to-use analog video technologies such as the VHS and the consumer camcorder. As cinema entered a new era with global avant-garde new wave movements, we also saw a worldwide explosion of both experimental and accessible video art. With the newfound availability and affordability of these video technologies, marginalized peoples were more able than ever before to have their voices heard on their own terms.

And then came AIDS.

The 1980s saw a new boom in queer activism, often largely centered around the AIDS epidemic. By the end of the decade however, “urgency and rage began to collapse into despair and frustration for the ACT UP generation.” But “a renaissance of film and video arrived, just when the passionate energy that had characterized AIDS activism was flagging.” This “New Queer Cinema” was “was a fiercely serious cinema, intent on rewriting both past and future, providing inspiration for whatever and whoever was going to come next.”[1]

Today we will be taking a look at some of the AIDS activist film and video art that preceded, flourished during, and continued on after the New Queer Cinema. Since there's far too much excellent AIDS film and video art out there to count, much less to talk about in a few short videos, we will be focusing on the prolific career of Toronto new wave video artist and filmmaker John Greyson, who we had the immense pleasure of sitting down with in his beautiful home in Toronto's queer Queen West district.

John Greyson dropped out of art school and moved to Toronto in 1980 from his hometown of London, ON to write for The Body Politic and pursue a life in art and queer activism.[2] His career has spanned over four decades, during which time he has directed more than 60 films, created several performance and installation pieces, and published a plethora of articles in both academic journals and popular press.[3] Throughout his career he has been deeply embedded in grassroots activist movements around the world,[4] and has been instrumental to multiple collaborative video projects and programs.[5] He has served as a full-time professor in York University’s Film Department since 2005.[6]

(428 words)

[1] B. Ruby Rich, New Queer Cinema the Director’s Cut (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), xix.

[2] Wendy G. Pearson and Susan Margaret Knabe, Zero Patience (Vancouver, B.C.: Arsenal Pulp ; London, 2011), 39.

[3] Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie, and Thomas Waugh, “Filmography & Selected Writings,” in The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, ed. Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie, and Thomas Waugh (Montreal: Mcgill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 503-518.

[4] B. Ruby Rich, “Forward,” in The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, ed. Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie, and Thomas Waugh (Montreal: Mcgill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), xv–xvi.

[5] John Greyson to Lia MacKinnon, e-mail correspondence, January 22, 2022; Ryan Conrad, “Cable Access Queer: Revisiting ‘Toronto Living with AIDS’ (1990-1991) by Ryan Conrad, P. 1,” Jump Cut, 2021, https://ejumpcut.org/currentissue/Conrad-TorontoAIDS/index.html.

[6] “John Greyson – AMPD,” Faculty Directory (York University), accessed March 21, 2022, https://ampd.yorku.ca/profile/john-greyson/.

Part I - Beginnings

John Greyson’s first foray into AIDS video was his 1987 music video spoof The ADS Epidemic (short for Acquired Dread of Sex), created in collaboration with composer Glenn Schellenberg. The film draws influence from 80s queer new wave and synthpop and Rosa von Praunheim’s pioneering German AIDS musical comedy A Virus Knows No Morals (Ein Virus kennt keine Moral, 1986). Greyson also pastiches Luchino Visconti’s 1971 adaptation of Death in Venice, transplanting its main character Gustav von Aschenbach into modern-day Toronto. Greyson and Schellenberg adopt a musical modality to lampoon the AIDS public health messaging of the time. As art historian and activist Douglas Crimp puts it, “AIDS education campaigns devised by marketing agencies contracted by governments [failed to] take into account any aspect of psychic life but fear. An Industry that has used sexual desire to sell everything from cars to detergents suddenly finds itself at a loss for how to sell a condom.”[1] Greyson’s glitzy, tongue in cheek, sex positive MTV take on the AIDS PSA directly challenges the prudish norms of early AIDS messaging with lines like “you can get ADS from the Toronto Sun, you can get ADS from Ronald Reagan, stop the ADS plague, safe sex is fun.” Also released in 1987 was UK-based video artist Isaac Julien’s classic This is Not an AIDS Advertisement, a more abstract but still decidedly satirical sensual montage of cheesy imagery, incidentally shot partly in Venice.[2]

(254 words)

[1] Douglas Crimp, “Tell a Story, Save a Life,” in The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, ed. Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie, and Thomas Waugh (Montreal: Mcgill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 59.

[2] Ibid., 61

Part II – Pop-a-Boner (1993)

One of Greyson’s best-known films is his 1993 feature Zero Patience, and for good reason. This irreverent and glamourous movie musical tackles the myth of AIDS Patient Zero with wit and style, and a healthy serving of irony. The film imagines a washed-up Sir Richard Francis Burton – known for his English translations of the Kama Sutra and a rendition of the Arabian Nights infamous for its emphasis on sexual imagery, as well as his quest to measure all the dicks – who, after an “unfortunate encounter” with the fountain of youth, has found himself working for a Toronto Museum of Natural History. He meets Zero, a fictionalized version of Gaetan Dugas, the Quebecois flight attendant accused of bringing HIV to North America, and the two form a reluctant partnership that of course ends in sex. The fabulously depraved musical numbers – choreographed by Susan McKenzie and composed once again by Glenn Schellenberg – are befitting of a supremely twisted Busby Berkeley film. Numbers include “Pop-a-Boner,” wherein three towel-clad men explain the rules of bathhouse etiquette, and “The Butthole Duet” which features Richard and Zero’s anuses singing to each other under the sheets. Needless to say, it’s a far cry from the largely melodramatic AIDS features that precede it. Comparisons to von Praunheim’s A Virus Knows No Morals are easy to spot, and it clearly had a large influence on Greyson’s style. However, Zero Patience is a wholly unique film that could only have been conceived during the lawless zeitgeist of the New Queer Cinema, and could only have been executed this well by Greyson and Schellenberg.

An HBO film adaptation of And the Band Played On, the 1987 book which popularized the myth of Patient Zero, also happened to premiere in 1993. In stark contrast to Zero Patience, And the Band Played On took the scapegoating of Gaetan Dugas at face value. On top of that, And the Band Played On is a very dry and melodramatic docudrama with a sprawling 2h20 runtime. On the topic of dry melodramas, Jonathan Demme’s sorely closeted, conservative, and arguably homophobic Oscar-winning AIDS feature Philadelphia was released to US theatres on the same weekend as Zero Patience.[1] Greyson cites Derek Jarman’s experimental soundscape film Blue (1993) and Cynthia Roberts’ 1994 real-time docu-fiction hybrid as superior works dealing with AIDS.[2]

(387 words)

[1] Wendy G. Pearson and Susan Margaret Knabe, Zero Patience (Vancouver, B.C.: Arsenal Pulp ; London, 2011), 22.

[2] John Greyson, John “Pop-a-Boner” Greyson, interview by Isaiah Hagerman and Lia MacKinnon, February 19, 2022.

Part III - A Hybrid Docu-Fiction Musical Multi-Channel Installation Video Opera!? (2003)

Yes, you heard that right! Perhaps Greyson’s most ambitious project to date, Fig Trees (2003) combines these seemingly incompatible genres and modalities in a rich tapestry of “frothy absurd nonsense”[1] reminiscent of yet wholly different from Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s 1934 opera Four Saints in Three Acts. And, to top it all off, the piece is narrated by an albino squirrel. The piece tells the story of prominent South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat through the anachronistic eyes of Stein and Thomson, who are imagined to be writing an opera about him, within Greyson and Wall’s opera. This fictitious tale is interspersed by real interviews with living AIDS activists, most notably Toronto AIDS activist Tim McCaskell. Conceived and co-created with composer David Wall, the piece was unveiled in 2003 as a series of 8 installations at the Oakville Galleries in Oakville, a suburb of Toronto. Further iterations followed at various locations across Canada in subsequent years. In 2007, a single-channel feature film version was filmed with the same cast and additional scenes. The feature version premiered in 2009 at the Berlin International Film Festival.[2]

(188 words)

[1] Fig Trees, Screener Link (Toronto, ON: Greyzone, 2009).

[2] “John Greyson,” Faculty Directory (York University), accessed March 21, 2022, https://ampd.yorku.ca/profile/john-greyson/.

Part IV – AIDS Video: Past, Present, and Future (2022)

To conclude this piece, we will be taking a sneak peak at John Greyson’s upcoming collaborative AIDS video project, Viral Interventions, and the threads that connect it back to his earlier works, especially his collaborative cable access programme Toronto Living with AIDS (TLWA, 1989-1991). The TLWA programme consisted of 13 commissioned half-hour AIDS videos destined for distribution on the public-access networks of Rogers and MacLean-Hunter, produced by Greyson and Michael Balser. This was not the first of Greyson’s curatorial endeavours – he previously curated the Angry Initiatives, Different Strategies tape (1988) and co-curated Video Against AIDS (1989) – but it was the most widely distributed of the three, being co-funded by various public health agencies. Greyson directed two pilots for the programme in 1989, The Great AZT Debate, about the controversial antiretroviral drug, and The World is Sick (sic), which documented the 1989 World AIDS Conference in Montreal, as narrated by a snarky drag queen. Though Greyson and Balser managed to produce 13 videos for the series, they were unable to secure funding for a second series, as the station manager at Rogers Cable refused to continue airing the programme due to scenes of “men French kissing and the caressing of thighs” in one of the videos.[1]

Greyson’s upcoming project “Viral Interventions is a direct response to” the TLWA series. Greyson and Sara Flicker are leading the project with support from Alison Duke, Darien Taylor, Richard Fung, and Ryan Conrad. The project consists of three series of six 10-minute commissioned AIDS videos by a diverse group of both new and established artists. In addition to the video programmes, the last of which has locked picture, Greyson and his collaborators are planning a conference, exhibition, print publication, screening series, and an interactive documentary about the project itself. [2] Though the official launch date is not until 2024, Greyson has kindly informed us to keep our eyes on the Cinema Politica schedule for this summer (2022) for more news about the project.[3]

(334 words)

[1] Ryan Conrad, “Cable Access Queer: Revisiting ‘Toronto Living with AIDS’ (1990-1991) by Ryan Conrad, P. 1,” Jump Cut, 2021, https://ejumpcut.org/currentissue/Conrad-TorontoAIDS/index.html.

[2] John Greyson to Lia MacKinnon, e-mail correspondence, January 22, 2022.

[3] John Greyson to Lia MacKinnon, February 19, 2022.

Epilogue - Up-and-Coming Poz Film & Video Artists to Look Out For

Before we wrapped things up with John, we asked him for some HIV+ filmmakers and video artists to look out for in the coming months and years.

Bibliography

And the Band Played On. Streaming. New York, NY: Home Box Office, Inc., 1993.

Conrad, Ryan. “Cable Access Queer: Revisiting ‘Toronto Living with AIDS’ (1990-1991) by Ryan Conrad, P. 1.” Jump Cut, 2021. https://ejumpcut.org/currentissue/Conrad-TorontoAIDS/index.html.

Demme, Jonathan, dir. Philedelphia. Streaming. Burbank, CA: Tri-Star Pictures, Inc., 1993.

Egoyan, Atom and Ian Balfour. Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film. London: Mit Press, 2004.

“Fig Trees Press Kit.” Greyzone. York University, 2009. http://www.yorku.ca/greyzone/figtrees/docs/FigTrees_PressKit.pdf.

Greyson, John, dir. The ADS Epidemic. YouTube. Toronto, ON: Greyzone, 1987.

———. Conversation, February 19, 2022.

———. E-mail correspondence, January 22, 2022.

———. Fig Trees. 2003. Multimedia Installation. Oakville, ON. Oakville Galleries.

———, dir. Fig Trees. Screener Link. Toronto, ON: Greyzone, 2009.

———, dir. The Great AZT Debate. Screener Link. Toronto, ON: Toronto Living with AIDS, 1989.

———. John “Pop-a-Boner” Greyson. Interview by Isaiah Hagerman and Lia MacKinnon, February 19, 2022.

———, dir. The World Is Sick (Sic). Screener Link. Toronto, ON: Toronto Living with AIDS, 1989.

———, dir. Zero Patience. VHS. 1993; Willowdale, ON: Cineplex Odeon Video, 1996.

Greyson, John, and Michael Balser. “Toronto Living with AIDS.” Toronto Living with AIDS, 1989-1991.

Hays, Matthew. The View from Here : Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007.

Jarman, Derek, dir. BLUE. YouTube. New York, NY: Zeitgeist Films, 1993.

“John Greyson.” Faculty Directory. York University. Accessed March 21, 2022. https://ampd.yorku.ca/profile/john-greyson/.

Julien, Isaac, dir. This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement. YouTube. Los Angeles, CA: Frameline Distribution, 1987.

Longfellow, Brenda, Scott MacKenzie, and Thomas Waugh. The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson. Montreal: Mcgill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

Pearson, Wendy G., and Susan Margaret Knabe. Zero Patience. Vancouver, B.C.: Arsenal Pulp. 2011.

Rich, B. Ruby. New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.

Roberts, Cynthia, dir. The Last Supper. Screener Link. London, UK: British Film Institute, 1994.

Stein, Gertrude, and Virgil Thomson. Four Saints in Three Acts. 1934. Opera.

Visconti, Luchino, dir. Death in Venice. Streaming. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., 1971.

Von Praunheim, Rosa, dir. A Virus Knows No Morals. Screener Link. Berlin, DE: Rosa von Praunheim Filmproduktion, 1986.

Credits

Conceived, researched, written, directed, lit, shot, recorded, and edited by Lia MacKinnon

Presented by Isaiah Hagerman

Featuring John Greyson

Production assistance and wardrobe from Sophie Cardyn and Allana Macaulay

Makeup by Nathaniel Harley Le Rouge

Special thanks to Karen Herland, Matthew Hays, Thomas Waugh, Ryan Conrad, Richard Lipman, Geneviève Goggin, and Bill MacKinnon

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Ideological Analysis of Do the Right Thing

  One would be hard-pressed to do any research on Spike Lee’s seminal Do the Right Thing (1989), or even simply watch the film, without absorbing some knowledge about the ideological context behind it. The film expresses a clear political message and deals with social issues that were and still are incredibly pressing. The ideology of the film is displayed prominently, both directly and indirectly within the text of the film, as well as in the practices, context and the extensive documentation of the film’s production. Indeed, I’ve at least touched upon the topic of ideology in all of my essays on the film. Here I will briefly go over the political aspects of the film’s content, before turning my attention to the ideological aspects of the films production, release and reception, and discussing how the textual interrelates with the extratextual context of the film’s production.

  Do the Right Thing, like its director, does not equivocate when it comes to ideology. As discussed in my Industry Analysis1 and my Auteur Study,2 Lee has long been an outspoken advocate for social change. Many of his films deal directly with the politics of racial tension in America, and Do the Right Thing is no exception. The film is set on a single block in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a majority Black and Puerto Rican Brooklyn neighbourhood. The central conflict stems from a group of local residents who demand that Sal, the proprietor of the neighbourhood pizzeria, put up pictures of Black celebrities on his restaurants so-called “wall of fame” plastered with images of famous American Italians. While the whole film is packed with ideological subtext, there are also many direct references to the politics surrounding American race relations in the 1980s.

  The film opens with a credits sequence set to Fight the Power, the socially conscious hip hop anthem written for the film by Public Enemy, whose hook calls the listener to “fight the powers that be.”3 The song is repeated frequently during key moments, and is strongly associated with the character Radio Raheem, who walks around the neighbourhood blasting it from his boom box. Throughout the film, the character Smiley pushes hand-coloured images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And Malcolm X shaking hands and grinning widely, before finally pinning one up on the wall of fame amidst the burning wreckage of the pizzeria – the last sequence before the films coda. The film ends with narration from the local radio DJ Mr. Señor Love Daddy, who announces that the mayor of New York is coming to the block, and reminds both his fictional listeners and the film’s viewers: “Register to vote. The election is coming up”4 (emphasis in original. The New York mayoral election would take place in November 1989, four months after Do the Right Thing’s July premiere). Before the credits roll, two quotes scroll across the screen: one from Dr. King, and one from Malcolm X. King states that “violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral.” Malcolm X, on the other hand, argues that because “the bad [people in America] are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need,” and that “because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation.” He states that “I don’t even call it violence when it’s self-defense, I call it intelligence.” These two statements of differing stances are followed by the aforementioned picture of the two civil rights leaders seemingly seeing eye to eye despite their different approaches.5

  The disagreement central to the plot ends in catastrophe as a fight breaks out which ends with Radio Raheem, a young Black man, being choked to death by an officer of the law, which followed by an uprising against Sal’s establishment. In the context of current Black Lives Matter protests and the deaths of Manuel Ellis, Byron Williams, Javier Ambler, Christopher Lowe, Eric Garner, Derrick Scott and George Floyd, all of whom died by asphyxiation during arrest or while in police custody,6 Do the Right Thing can seem frighteningly prescient. Although it’s message still feels woefully relevant today, it is important to remember that these murders are not new phenomenon, and that the boom of anti-racist activism and uprising that has been growing since 2014 is the effect of an excruciatingly long and bloody history of systemic violence against Black individuals. A certain false consciousness exists that racism is over in America – that it ended with the emancipation proclamation, or with the 24th amendment, or the string of Civil Rights Acts in the 1950s and 1960s, or any other subsequent milestone. When the racially motivated violence and systemic oppression of Black Americans are not at the forefront of the national discourse, many white liberals (and the vast majority of the right-wing) have a tendency forget that these problems still occur. When asked who did the “right thing,” Spike Lee responded that while a lot of the characters may have done the right thing, what is certain is that “the cops did the wrong thing, that’s for sure, and what’s sad is they continue to do the wrong thing, and nothing ever happens.”7

  The plotline involving Raheem’s suffocation was a direct reference to two particular events, as per Spike Lee’s pre-production notes. The use of a pizza parlour as the location for the climactic death and subsequent uprising, and Sal’s use of a bat to destroy Raheem’s radio, are allusions to the 1986 Howard Beach incident8 in which Michael Griffith, a 23 year old Trinidadian man, was accosted and murdered by a group of young white men with baseball bats outside a Pizzeria in Queens.9 Lee also alludes to the murder of Michael Stewart in 1983,10 who died while in the custody of transit police, allegedly having been choked to death, and unquestionably having been beaten and brutalized.11 An end card dedicates the film to the families of Eleanor Bumpers, Michael Griffith, Arthur Miller, Edmund Perry, Yvonne Smallwood and Michael Stewart,12 who were just a few of the victims of a pattern of racially motivated violence and police brutality in the late 1970s and 1980s in New York City. By the time Lee began work on Do the Right Thing racial tensions in the city had been driven through the roof13 through violence, corruption, systemic injustice, political scandals, and off-colour comments made by then-mayor Ed Koch.14

  Right off the bat while conceptualizing the film, Spike Lee knew that this was a “hot one” and that his “subject matter [was] volatile.” In a journal entry from December 1987, Lee writes “The studios might not want to touch this film. I know I’ll come up against some static from the white press. They’ll say I’m trying to incite a race riot.”15 Indeed, Paramount was “scared that this film might incite Black folks to riot,”and “[kept] suggesting [Lee] change the ending,” certainly an important factor in their eventual decision to back out of producing the film.16 Just as expected, critics were quick to conclude that Lee’s film was “dynamite under every seat,” in the words of Newsweek columnist Jack Kroll in his article titled “The Fuse Has Been Lit.” Kroll asks “how will young urban audiences—black [sic.] and white—react to the film’s climactic explosion of interracial violence?”17 Lee retorts in his Spike’s Last Word featurette that Kroll “put in ‘black and white’” in a transparent attempt to “cover his ass” from being labeled a racist.18

  Meanwhile, in an editorial for New York Magazine, Joe Klein stated that “if Lee does hook large black [sic.] audiences, there’s a good chance the message they take from the film will increase racial tensions” and that a violent reaction “can’t be ruled out.” He doubles down on this fear mongering when he says that the film will open “in not too many theaters near you, one hopes.” He goes on to accuse the film of being “more trendoid [sic.] than tragic,” and Lee of being intellectually dishonest in “reflecting the latest riffs in hip black [sic.] separatism.” Klein bemoans the fact that “the cops in this movie… have no quirks or humor, no redeeming characteristics at all,” and calls Mookie’s “throwing [of] a garbage can through the store’s window, one of the stupider, more self-destructive acts of violence [he’s] ever witnessed,” as if someone hadn’t been choked to death on camera only moments before. When he follows up with the parenthetical “if black [sic.] kids act on what they see, Lee might have destroyed his career,” to me it is clear that he believes that Black “kids” (a term frequently used to infantilize Black and other minority communities and invalidate their right to self-determination and political opinion) will indeed be incited to violence by this film’s ending.19 In his review in the very same issue of New York, critic David Denby echoes Kroll in saying Lee is “playing with dynamite,” and that “the response to the movie could get away from him.” He concludes that “if some audiences go wild, [Lee] is partly responsible.”20

  Responding to the line of criticism which claims the film will incite riots, Lee asks “do white audiences go crazy when they’re going to see Terminator…? While [Black audiences are supposedly] such mental midgets that [they] can’t tell the difference between what’s on screen and what’s real life?” To those critics who lament the loss of the oh-so-important neighbourhood fixture of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria without so much as a mention of the murder of Radio Raheem, Lee simply has this to say: “In their estimation, it doesn’t even up. The life of one Black ‘thug,’ hoodlum, whatever you want to call him…, versus white owned property. They see [the property] as more valuable!” Ten years after the release of the film people would still continue to ask Lee “‘did Mookie do the right thing?’ […] Not one person of colour has ever asked [him] that question.”21 To him as to most Black audiences the film makes it abundantly clear that whether Mookie did the “right” thing or not is irrelevant, because the property damaged by the riot (which would be covered by insurance anyway22) is worth nothing next to the death of a young man full of potential, who had a family and a life ahead of him. For Spike Lee, “that’s what the movie’s about: about human life, and how in America, Black life has become devalued.”23 No where is this message more painfully clear than in the last lines of the film, in which Mr. Señor Love Daddy reports:

Our mayor has commissioned a blue-ribbon panel, and I quote, “to get to the bottom of last night’s disturbance. The City of New York will not let property be destroyed by anyone.” End quote. […] The next record goes out to Radio Raheem, we love you brother.24

This fictionalized mayor Koch, much like the critics of Do the Right Thing, blatantly values white-owned property more than Black lives. This is yet another sentiment that’s all too pertinent today as right-wing commentators gladly condemn the destruction of property by Black Lives Matter protesters while minimizing the murders and the long record of systemically enforced prejudice at the root of the unrest.25

  Given the ideology behind Do the Right Thing, it is not surprising that Spike Lee gathered a diverse crew comprised largely of people of colour. As discussed in my Industry Analysis,26 Lee takes great pride in being “in a position to hire people […] who deserve jobs,” “young, talented Black artists and technicians”27 who have less opportunity for employment, especially within the Hollywood studio-backed and union-controlled system. He also made a point of negotiating with the unions to ensure that many of the Black crew members who worked and interned on the set of the film would subsequently have the opportunity to join.28 Lee and his line producer also took special care to hire as many local residents of Bed-Stuy as possible, bringing them on as carpenters, extras, runners and more.29

1. Lia MacKinnon, “Industry and Analysis of Do the Right Thing,” December 11, 2020, https://lia.queerfilm.club/post/637252688548069376.

2. Lia MacKinnon, “Auteur Study of Spike Lee,” December 11, 2020, https://lia.queerfilm.club/post/637251558824919042.

3. Public Enemy, "Fight the Power," track #1 on Do the Right Thing (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), (Los Angeles, CA: Motown Records, 1989), YouTube Music Streaming, https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=EYUH2g3bshA&feature=share.

4. Spike Lee, dir., Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray (1989; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 01:51:25 – 01:51:50.

5. Ibid., 01:52:20 – 01:54:00.

6. Meagan Flynn, “Another Black Man Who Died in Custody Told Officers, ‘I Can’t Breathe.’ One Responded, ‘I Don’t Care.,’” Washington Post, June 11, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/11/derrick-scott-oklahoma-city-police/; Patty Nieberg and Thomas Peipert, “Colorado Reopens Inquiry into 2019 Death of Elijah McClain, a Black Man Put into Chokehold by Police,” Chicago Tribune (Tribune Publishing Company, June 25, 2020), https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ ct-nw-colorado-elijah-mcclain-death-police-investigation-20200625-navug4wxr5hsflsr7pnprwxq4q-story.html.

7. Spike Lee, “Cannes Press Conference,” Disc 2, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (1989; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 00:15:25 – 00:16:30.

8. Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing: Director’s Journal (1989; repr., New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 24, 47.

9. Robert D. McFadden, “Black Man Dies After a Beating By Whites in Queens,” The New York Times, December 21, 1986, https://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/21/nyregion/black-man-dies-after-beating-by-whites-in-queens.html.

10. Lee, Director’s Journal, 59.

11. Sydney H. Schanberg, “New York; The Stewart Case,” The New York Times, January 14, 1984, https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/14/opinion/new-york-the-stewart-case.html.

12. Lee, Do the Right Thing, 01:54:10.

13. Samuel G. Freedman, “New York Race Tension Is Rising Despite Gains,” The New York Times, March 29, 1987, sec. New York, https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/nyregion/new-york-race-tension-is-rising-despite-gains.html.

14. Ken Rudin, “Ed Koch, New York City And The Politics Of Resentment And Race,” NPR, February 4, 2013, https://www.npr.org/sections/politicaljunkie/2013/02/04/170842922/ed-koch-new-york-city-and-the-politics-of-resentment-and-race.

15. Lee, Director’s Journal, 33-34.

16. Ibid., 74-75, 80.

17. Jack Kroll, “The Fuse Has Been Lit,” Newsweek, July 3, 1989, quoted in Spike Lee, “Spike’s Last Word,” Disc 2, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (2000; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 00:02:05 – 00:02:55.

18. Spike Lee, “Spike’s Last Word,” Disc 2, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (2000; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 00:02:05 – 00:02:55.

19. Joe Klein, “Spiked?,” New York Magazine, June 26, 1989, Google Books, https://books.google.ca/books?id=VucCAAAAMBAJ, 14-15.

20. David Denby, “He’s Gotta Have It,” New York Magazine, June 26, 1989, Google Books, https://books.google.ca/books?id=VucCAAAAMBAJ, 53-54.

21. Lee, “Spike’s Last Word.”

22. Lee, Do the Right Thing, 01:48:45 – 01:49:00.

23. Lee, “Cannes Press Conference,” 00:15:25 – 00:16:30.

24. Lee, Do the Right Thing, 01:51:00 – 01:51:55.

25. Tom Cotton, “Send In the Troops,” The New York Times, June 3, 2020, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html; Rich Lowry, “Destruction of Property Qualifies as Violence,” Boston Herald (Alden Global Capital, June 7, 2020), https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/06/07/destruction-of-property-qualifies-as-violence/; Hollie McKay, “George Floyd Unrest: How Riot Groups Come Together to Loot, Destroy,” Fox News (Fox Corporation, June 1, 2020), https://www.foxnews.com/us/george-floyd-riots-looting-destroy.

26. MacKinnon, Industry Analysis.

27. Lee, Director’s Journal, 105.

28. Spike Lee, “Commentary,” Disc 1, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (1995; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 00:36:50 – 00:38:10.

29. St. Clair Bourne, dir., “Making “Do the Right Thing”,” Disc 2, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (1989; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 00:16:25 – 00:16:35.

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Cinema Before Cinema: 20+ Years of Moving Images Before and After the Lumière Cinematographe

 Though the illusion of movement has been used as entertainment for thousands of years, the earliest forms of photographic moving images were embraced more by the scientific community than by the entertainment industry. As audience demand grew however, films began to be shown in Vaudeville houses, until eventually, moving picture exhibition flourished into an industry of its own, and paved the way for filmmaking as an art form.

 The first moving images were probably created by prehistoric cave painters when their drawings on uneven rock surfaces were viewed by flickering torchlight (see fig. 1).1 Later innovations which could be considered as precursors to cinema include shadow puppetry, known to have existed before 0 CE,2 as well as the Magic Lantern from the 17th century CE.3 Toys which use the principles of animation to create the illusion of movement have existed from at least the early 1800s with the invention of the Thaumatrope (see fig. 2, with instructions on how to make one yourself),4 though scholars have suggested that a similar device also existed prehistorically.5 Though these and most subsequent animation techniques from the Phenakistiscope (see fig. 3) to the Praxinoscope (see fig. 4) were created for entertainment, the initial development of photographic animated views was spurred by decidedly scientific motivations.

 The first known movie camera (in the most basic sense of the word) was invented by astronomer Jules Janssen in 1874 in order to record Passage de Vénus (1874; see fig. 5), showing Venus’ transit across the sun. The so-called revolver photographique used a rotating Daguerrotype plate attached to a single telescopic lens and was capable of recording 48 consecutive images in 72 seconds (see fig. 6).6 Often cited as the first true moving image (i.e. not taken at two thirds frames per second), Eadweard Muybridge’s Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (1877, projected 1880, see fig. 7) was shot on a series of cameras placed side-by-side to successfully prove that a trotting horse’s hooves all leave the ground simultaneously.7 Illustrations traced from his photographs were displayed in quick succession on his Zoöpraxiscope projection device before an American audience in May of 1880.8 Muybridge would build a career from this chronophotographic documentation of human and animal locomotion, publishing volumes of consecutive images for scientific and artistic reference.9 Several other attempts at something resembling cinema were made between 1880 and the mid-1890s, including Louis Le Prince’s patented moving picture camera with which he filmed Roundhay Garden Scene (1888), widely believed to be the first film shot on a single device at a reasonable framerate (check out this video of a neural-net remastered 4k 60fps colorized version of this early film).10

 The Edison Kinetoscope, a device that passed an illuminated film strip in front of a peephole, was the first commercialized form of motion picture. It was patented in 1891 and first built in 1892, but wouldn’t make its public debut before 1894 (see fig. 8). Edison’s interest in cinema as a commercial venture was primarily a ploy to sell more lightbulbs and expand his electricity business, but Mutoscope and Biograph were quick to compete with a similar device, which helped develop an early market for cinema.11 In 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumière developed and presented their Cinématographe, the first fully developed motion picture camera and projector. Much like its predecessors, this new invention was not developed with the sole intent of commercial entertainment uses: the first projection of Sortie d’usine (1895, see fig. 9)was to an audience of scientists who had come to see Louis Lumière talk and had not payed for entry. The screening did however prove popular, and before long the Lumières would begin showing it to a paying public audience at the Salon Indien in Paris.12

 Once the technology for film was refined and the demand was recognized, cinema began to commercialize. By this point, films were primarily being screened in Vaudeville theatres.13 Though the next decade or so was made up of ‘cinema of attractions,’ short views of single scenes, entrepreneurs such as Mitchell and Keynon were able to capitalize on the novelty of the medium by charging people to see themselves on screen,14 while creatives like Georges Méliès took advantage of new technologies to create elaborate and inventive trick photography and special effects, most famously in 1902’s goregeously hand-tinted sci-fi spectacle Le Voyage dans la Lune (which can be viewed here). In the 1900s films grew in scope and subject matter, projection hardware and training became easier to obtain, the American working class gained more free time for low-cost entertainment, and ‘middle-man’ film distributors and trade journals set up shop. These factors lead nickelodeons to pop up across the United States and the world, gradually supplanting and absorbing the Vaudeville scene. By 1909, narrative film production and exhibition had become a fully-fledged and rapidly growing industry.15 The early 1910s saw the rise of the serial, as well as a migration of talent from Vaudeville to cinema, including Chaplin and Keaton who would go on to be the biggest stars of their time.16 By 1915, 20 years after the first Cinématographe projections, film had become an unstoppable force and one of the main forms of entertainment in most of the world.

1. Werner Herzog, dir., Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Blu-ray (New York, N.Y.: IFC Films, 2011).

2. Fan Pen Chen, “Shadow Theaters of the World,” Asian Folklore Studies 62, no. 1 (2003): 25–64, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1179080.

3. Christiaan Huygens, Oeuvres Complètes: Supplément à La Correspondance, DBNL, vol. XXII (1659; repr., Den Haag (The Hague), NL: Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren, 1950), https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/huyg003oeuv22_01/huyg003oeuv22_01_0093.php.

4. “Literary Report,” The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal 15 (April 1, 1825): 177, https://books.google.ca/books?id=4UUFAAAAQAAJ&q=thaumatrope&pg=PA513&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=thaumatrope&f=false.

5. Marc Azéma and Florent Rivère, “Animation in Palaeolithic Art: A Pre-Echo of Cinema,” Antiquity 86, no. 332 (June 2012): 316–24, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003598x00062785.

6. Françoise Launay and Peter D. Hingley, “Jules Janssen’s ‘Revolver Photographique’ and Its British Derivative, ‘the Janssen Slide,’” Journal for the History of Astronomy 36, no. 1 (February 2005): 57–79, https://doi.org/10.1177/002182860503600107.

7. The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Eadweard Muybridge: British Photographer,” in Encyclopædia Britannica (Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., May 6, 2018), https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eadweard-Muybridge.

8. André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning, “Introduction,” in American Cinema 1890-1905, ed. André Gaudreault (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U Press, 2009), 2.

9. Britannica, “Muybridge.”

10. Ian Youngs, “Louis Le Prince, Who Shot the World’s First Film in Leeds,” BBC News, June 22, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33198686.

11. Douglas, “Early Cinema: Inventors and Gadgets, Part 2.”

12. Gaudreault and Gunning, “Introduction,” 4.

13. Ibid., 15.

14. Douglas, “Early Cinema... Part 2.”

15. Gaudreault and Gunning, “Introduction,” 11-16.

16. David Douglas, “’Week One Discussion,” Zoom Video Lecture, (September 11, 2020).

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Industry Analysis of Do the Right Thing

Conceived by Spike Lee in 1988,[1] Do the Right Thing (1989) was a decidedly post-Fordist venture. The film was sold to the Universal as a package unit and co-produced by Lee’s production company 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. It was shot on location in Brooklyn with participation from members of the community depicted. From early on in the writing process Lee knew he wanted to shoot the film on location in order to accurately portray the neighbourhood,[2] saying he “would have been crucified to do a film about Bedford-Stuyvesant and not shoot it in Bed-Stuy.”[3] Although the radio station, pizzeria and Korean fruit market were built as sets,[4] the film owes its deeply authentic look and feel to the iconic brownstones, murals and stoops of the Brooklyn neighbourhood.

Spike Lee and line producer Jon Kilik “[tried] to employ as many local people as possible,” hiring them as extras, as carpenters and set builders, and as runners and production assistants.[5] Moving beyond the confines of the Bed-Stuy neighbourhood, it is also clear that Lee made a concerted effort to hire Black artists and technicians to fill the majority of the behind the scenes roles. On-set security was provided by the Fruit of Islam, a wing of the Afro-American Nation of Islam organization,[6] and one can tell by watching any of the abundant behind-the-scenes footage that all but a few of the key technical roles are filled by Black people, from the DoP to the set dressers.[7] As Lee puts it, looking around and “[seeing] all these young, talented Black artists and technicians” working on his production and “[being] in a position to hire people who need jobs, people who deserve jobs” is “a good feeling.”[8]

After facing funding and marketing issues while working with Columbia Pictures on his previous film School Daze,[9] Lee was already wary of working with a large studio as an outsider director and member of a marginalized community. Originally set to be produced by Paramount, Do the Right Thing had its funding pulled at the end of April 1988, around three months before production was set to commence.[10] After shopping his script around, Lee finally received an offer of $7.5 million from Universal,[11] but as weeks went on still no document was signed by either party, leaving Lee asking himself “what the f**k is going on.”[12] On May 14th, a mere two weeks before the May 31st pre-production date, Universal offered 6 million, before finally settling on 6.5 million on May 25th.[13] The average budget for a Hollywood feature in 1987 as per Lee was $18 million, nearly three times this budget.[14] To make matters worse, Universal waited until five weeks before shooting was set to begin to wire him any start-up money whatsoever, at which point Lee had already “put up a substantial amount of [his] own money already.”[15] Lee considered this vastly unjust, writing: “It’s ridiculous. White boys get real money, f**k up, lose millions of dollars, and still get chance after chance. Not so with [people of color]. You f**k up one time, that’s it. After the commercial success of She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, I shouldn’t have to fight for the pennies.”[16] Though he would have “[liked] the luxury of a ten-week-shoot – at least,”[17] as well as a budget of “seven to ten million [dollars],”[18] Universal’s paltry $6.5 million only allowed for eight weeks with “the tightest crew.”[19] While many crew members filled specialized jobs, as can be determined from the end credits,[20] with such a tight crew most of them were surely required to fill a plurality of roles on set, a post-Taylorist practice.

As a major motion picture being shot in New York, Do the Right Thing also had to have “a union crew, which [also took] a big chunk of [the] budget.”[21] To add insult to injury, “historically these unions were lily-white.” Lee was forced to “let [the unions] know upfront that they do not have many people of colour amongst their rank and file, very few women, and that if they want business from [him] they’d have to do something about that.” Thankfully, they were “able to work out some internship[s]” which Lee says helped get “a lot of Black people in the unions.”[22]

Much of the team behind Do the Right Thing was made up of Spike Lee’s friends and family. Lee had attended grad school at NYU with director of photography Ernest Dickerson[23] and worked part time at editor Barry Alexander Brown’s distribution company.[24] Jade was played by Spike’s sister Joie Lee, while their father Bill scored the film, their brother David provided still photography,[25] and their other brother Cinqué shot much of the behind the scenes footage.[26] When it came to casting, Lee “[tried] to establish a rapport with an actor” before contacting their agent, explaining that to him agents are “some of the lowest forms of life,” and that “it’s a drag dealing with them.”[27] Between his poor experiences with the so-called ‘Hollywood elite,’ his close connections to his cast and crew, and his careful hiring process, it’s no wonder that Lee has a greater respect for his ‘below-the-line’ crew than many of his peers may. This is reflected in the bonus content available on almost all home video releases of Do the Right Thing. The original 1995 Criterion Collection LaserDisc features commentary from production designer Wynn Thomas, among others, the 2000 DVD release adds an extensive interview with editor Barry Alexander Brown,[28] and the 1989 making of documentary affords generous screen time to almost everyone on set, from the line producer to the construction crew to the local lady hired to help clean up after the crew.[29]

Though the production of Do the Right Thing was dogged with budget issues and time constraints, Spike Lee’s third “joint” ultimately turned out to be a triumphant success, bringing in over $47 million30 at the global box office against a $6.5 million budget. It solidified Lee and his cast and crew’s reputations and raised the profile of Black talent in the film industry, helping to make it easier for the next generation of Black filmmakers to break into the Hollywood mainstream.

Works Cited: [1] Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing: Director’s Journal (1989; repr., New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 23. [2] Ibid., 56. [3] St. Clair Bourne, dir., “Making “Do the Right Thing”,” Disc 2, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (1989; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 00:06:25 – 00:06:35. [4] Ibid., 00:10:45 – 00:11:25. [5] Ibid., 00:16:25 – 00:16:35. [6] Ibid., 00:02:10 – 00:02:55 [7] Ibid.; “Behind the Scenes,” Disc 1, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018). [8] Lee, Director’s Journal, 105. [9] Ibid., 31, 58, 93. [10] Ibid., 80. [11] Ibid., 82. [12] Ibid., 85. [13] Ibid., 88. [14] Ibid., 96. [15] Ibid., 91. [16] Ibid., 88. [17] Ibid., 30. [18] Ibid., 77. [19] Ibid., 88-89. [20] Spike Lee, dir., Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray (1989; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 01:54:15 – 01:59:35. [21] Lee, Director’s Journal, 88. [22] Spike Lee, Ernest Dickerson, Wynn Thomas, Joie Lee and Chuck D, “Commentary,” Disc 1, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (1995; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 00:36:50 – 00:38:10. [23] “Do the Right Thing: 20 Years Later,” Disc 2, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (2009; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 00:00:45 – 00:01:05. [24] “Barry Alexander Brown,” Disc 2, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018), 00:00:20 – 00:01:10. [25] Lee, Do the Right Thing, 01:54:15 – 01:59:35. “Menu Supplements Behind the Scenes,” Disc 1, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018). [26] Lee, Director’s Journal, 96. [27] “Menu,” Discs 1 and 2, Do the Right Thing, Blu-ray, (New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2018). [28] Bourne, “Making.” “Do the Right Thing,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed November 22, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097216/.

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Auteur Study of Spike Lee

  According to the New York Times, prolific director Spike Lee helped “[usher] in ... the American independent film movement of the 1980s.”[1] Lee is a tenured professor at his alma mater, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where since 2002 he has served as artistic director of the Graduate Film Program.[2] He also owns the production company 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, through which he produces most of his films. Throughout his career, Spike Lee has been a strong advocate for social change. Lee uses his voice as an auteur to draw attention to social issues and to highlight the beauty and resilience of Black American communities.

  Lee’s has faced funding issues since he began making movies, and has often produced his films independently or through alternative funding routes. His breakout feature She’s Gotta Have It (1986) was funded through various grants from state-run and non-profit organizations, “a cast working for deferred payments,”[3] and a crew made up largely of Lee’s family, friends and former classmates.[4] The film premiered at the Directors Fortnight, where Lee won a prize for young directors.[5] The majority of Lee’s filmography has made the rounds in the festival circuit before receiving a wide release, including five films which showed at Cannes,[6] where he is now the first Black Jury President.[7] He is also a strong supporter of the lesser-known American Black Film Festival.[8]

  Off the back of his early Cannes success, Lee received studio deals for his next few films, but was often unsatisfied with the budgets, editorial limitations and lack of marketing afforded to his films. In his pre-production journal for Do the Right Thing (1989), Lee ponders which studio to go with after Paramount backed out, writing “Touchstone, Orion, Universal? In a way all these motherf***ers are the same."[9] From the mid-nineties on, Lee alternated “between increasingly rare studio financing and esoteric indies, adapting as the landscape of both kept shifting under his feet.”[10] Lee has funded the majority of his films through private investments, outsider studios and distributors such as Netflix, Amazon and Blumhouse,[11] or even through Kickstarter.[12] Despite his indie sensibility and frequent festival appearances, Lee’s adaptability serves him well in straddling the line between art and commercial cinema. Although most of his feature films have been independent, he has a long history of directing commercials[13] as well as music videos for the likes of Public Enemy, Michael Jackson, Anita Baker and Prince.[14] When given a major studio budget for a feature film, Lee also clearly excels, as we can see by the popularity and financial success of his heist film Inside Man (2006), a 45 million dollar co-production between 40 Acres and a Mule, Universal and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment.[15]

  Spike Lee’s voice as an auteur is clear, having written, directed and produced the majority of his films.[16] In much of his earlier work he has also served as editor and actor.[17] He has maintained long-term collaborations with cinematographers Ernest K. Dickerson and Malik Hassan Sayeed,[18] editors Barry Alexander Brown and Sam Pollard,[19] and composer Terrence Blanchard.[20] Lee also frequently employs a line-up of actors including, most notably, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson, Delroy Lindo and John Turturro,[21] who’s highly successful screen acting careers were arguably catalyzed by their appearances in his early films. Lee uses his significant platform as an established producer and educator to elevate the voices of the next generation of Black filmmakers, often taking them under his wing as a mentor, offering them internships and production deals.[22]

  Almost all of Lee’s films contain themes of race and gender, and deal with social issues faced by Black American communities. His passion for these issues and his authenticity in depicting these communities feeds into Spike Lee’s cinematic self-expression, having grown up in Brooklyn where many of his films are set and shot,[23] and having attended the historically Black Morehouse College in Atlanta.[24] His first foray into filmmaking came in the summer of 1977, which saw a city-wide blackout in New York caused by a record-setting heatwave and an ensuing mass plunder of the city’s audio equipment stores.[25] Lee, having borrowed his friend’s Super 8 camera while home for the summer, decided to document the night of looting and the subsequent block parties taking advantage of the newfound DJ equipment. Upon his return to Morehouse, Lee declared a major in Mass Communications, and was encouraged by his film professor to edit his footage together into a documentary. His work on the what would become his first student film, Last Hustle in Brooklyn (1977, title a play on Last Tango in Paris), sparked in him a passion for filmmaking. As he states it, “film found me.”[26]

  Most of Lee’s filmography draws heavy inspiration from his lived experiences and uses his filming locations almost as characters of their own. On filming in Brooklyn, Lee says “it’s my home, it developed who I am and what I’ve become,” and this love for the borough permeates many of his films, “the people, the diversity and culture [serving as] his inspiration.”[27] She’s Gotta Have It, for instance, often shifts its focus from the plot at hand to show different aspects of the Fort-Greene neighbourhood, beginning with a montage of still photographs shot by Spike’s brother David Lee, inserts of day-to-day life in the neighbourhood, and an abundance of establishing shots which serve to show off the livelihood of the community itself rather than to establish any particular narrative space.[28] According to film scholar Manthia Diawara, Lee “positions the spectator to feel a sense of belonging to the place,” that he “develops his metaphor of public-space-as-home throughout the film.”[29] Do the Right Thing paints a stylistically similar portrait of Bedford-Stuyvesant, another Brooklyn neighbourhood, through the use of an ensemble cast and on-location filming, and expands upon the themes surrounding rising tensions caused by New York’s intolerable heatwaves, a phenomenon which he experienced first-hand while filming Last Hustle in Brooklyn. But nowhere are the autobiographical aspects of Spike Lee’s filmic style more apparent than in School Daze (1988). The film takes place at Mission College, a fictional historically Black Atlanta institution, and follows a Black undergraduate student and activist in a plot which clearly draws from Lee’s experiences studying at Morehouse.[30]

  Beyond thematic links, Spike Lee also has many recognizable stylistic markers across his filmography. He often adds emphasis to certain key shots by repeating them from different angles, like when the trash can comes crashing through Sal’s window in Do the Right Thing,[31] or when Malcolm X is reunited with his old partner Shorty in Lee’s biopic.[32] He also has a penchant for fourth wall breaking techniques, most apparently in She’s Gotta Have It’s constant in-your-face direct camera addresses. His famous double dolly shots are another breaking of the fourth wall. First employed in Mo’ Better Blues (1990),[33] where, in Lee’s own words, it was “really just show-offy, student film stuff,” he reused the technique subsequently to create “a transportive, or sometimes alienated feeling.”[34] This feeling is conveyed to great effect in Malcolm X (1992) when the civil rights leader passes by the ballroom where he would soon after be martyred, as if in a trance,[35] as well as the last scene of BlacKkKlansman, when Ron and his girlfriend Patrice investigate noises outside their apartment only to discover a flaming cross surrounded by Klansmen a ways outside their window.[36]

  Lee’s most prominent stylistic signature is his frequent use of still photography and archival footage to bring a sense of actualité to both his narrative and documentary films. This can be seen in the aforementioned opening montage of She’s Gotta Have It and subsequent inserts, and in both the still insert of two boxers in the lead-up to the climactic uprising in Do the Right Thing and the photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X shaking hands which concludes the film.[37] This practice was greatly expanded upon in Malcolm X, in which key moments throughout the film are punctuated by both real news footage and black and white insert shots of Denzel Washington’s Malcolm meant to evoke the look and feel of old newscasts.[38] Taking it even further still, the bulk of Spike Lee’s four-part documentary When the Levees Broke (2006) is made up of archival footage and photographs, with interviews and other footage only accounting for a small portion of the 255-minute runtime.[39]

  Lee continues to insert archival footage into most of his films to this day. His ending for BlacKkKlansman (2018) consisted of a montage of current news footage of acts of anti-Black violence, white supremacist gatherings, and speeches by the very much real and still relevant David Duke (the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard portrayed prominently in-story by Topher Grace) and President Donald Trump both showing support for white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.[40] He also book-ended Da Five Bloods (2020) with a montage of Black anti-Vietnam-war protesters and a speech by Dr. King, and interspersed still photos and paintings of Black historical figures.[41] Even in his recent concert film of David Byrne’s American Utopia (2020), Lee takes the opportunity to have family members of fallen victims of police brutality hold up archival photographs of those they lost in a montage while Byrne performs a cover of Janelle Monae’s Hell You Talmbout, a protest song whose refrain prompts listeners to repeat the names of Black people who have been murdered by police officers.[42]

  Throughout his 35-year career, Spike Lee has made a wide variety of films, from commercials and music videos to independent art films to major studio thrillers. He has seen success in both festival contexts and at the box office. Much of his filmography draws inspiration from his personal experiences and surroundings. As a writer, director and producer Lee brings his views on social issues into his filmmaking, frequently adding a layer of actualité by incorporating archival footage and photography into his films. Lee is among the first of the few Black directors to have been accepted into the mainstream canon of art cinema. His critical and financial success has helped pave the way for subsequent generations of Black cineastes, and his early success set the stage for the American Independent film movement as a whole.

Works cited: [1] Paul Brenner, “She’s Gotta Have It (1986) Review Summary,” The New York Times, archived October 27, 2007, accessed October 31, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20071027102646/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/44229/She-s-Gotta-Have-It/overview. [2] Nate Von Zumwalt, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Teacher: Spike Lee,” NYU | Tisch (New York University, November 19, 2019), https://tisch.nyu.edu/tisch-research-news-events/news/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-teacher-spike-lee. [3] Vadim Rizov, “Joint Financing: Spike Lee Has Never Had an Easy Time Funding His Films,” MTV News (Viacom International Inc., July 26, 2013), http://www.mtv.com/news/2770944/spike-lee-film-funding/. [4] Stuart Mieher, “Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It,” The New York Times Magazine, August 9, 1987, https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/09/magazine/spike-lee-s-gotta-have-it.html. [5] Spike Lee, “She’s Gotta Have It,” Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Société des réalisateurs de films, 1986), https://www.quinzaine-realisateurs.com/en/film/shes-gotta-have-it/. [6] “Spike Lee,” Festival de Cannes, 2020, https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/artist/spike-lee. [7] Yohana Desta, “Spike Lee for President…of the 2020 Cannes Film Jury,” Vanity Fair (Condé Nast, January 14, 2020), https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/01/spike-lee-cannes-jury-president. [8] Mike Fleming, Jr., “No Cannes Do: Why Spike Lee Nixed ‘Do The Right Thing’ Silver Anniversary For Black Fest Fete,” Deadline (Penske Business Media, LLC., May 13, 2014), https://deadline.com/2014/05/no-cannes-do-why-spike-lee-nixed-do-the-right-thing-silver-anni-for-black-fest-fete-729355/. [9] Spike Lee and Lisa Jones, Do the Right Thing : A Spike Lee Joint (New York, N.Y.: Fireside, 1989), 75. [10] Rizov, “Joint Financing.” [11] Da Five Bloods, directed by Spike Lee (Los Gatos, CA: Netflix, Inc., 2020), Netflix streaming; Chi-Raq, directed by Spike Lee (Culver City, CA: Amazon Studios, 2015), Amazon Prime Streaming; Pass Over, directed by Spike Lee (Culver City, CA: Amazon Studios, 2018), Amazon Prime Streaming; “BlacKkKlansman (2018) Company Credits,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7349662/companycredits. [12] Fleming, “No Cannes Do.” [13] “Spike Lee TV Commercials,” iSpot.tv (iSpot.tv, Inc., 2020), https://www.ispot.tv/topic/director/gK/spike-lee. [14] “Music Video’s,” 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, 2019, https://40acres.com/video/. [15] “Inside Man,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed November 1, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454848/. [16] “The Jointography,” 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, 2019, https://40acres.com/the-jointography/. [17] “Spike Lee,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000490/. [18] “Ernest R. Dickerson,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0225416; “Malik Hassan Sayeed,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0768434/. [19] “Barry Alexander Brown,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0113084/; “Sam Pollard,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0689498/. [20] “Terence Blanchard,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005966/. [21] “Giancarlo Esposito,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002064/; “Samuel L. Jackson,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000168/; “Delroy Lindo,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005148/; “John Turturro,” IMDb (IMDb.com, Inc.), accessed October 31, 2020, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001806/. [22] Von Zumwalt, “Artist as a Teacher” [23] Robin Bennefield, “Spike Lee on Why Brooklyn Has a Starring Role in His Films,” Marriott Bonvoy Traveler (Marriott International, Inc., December 4, 2015), https://traveler.marriott.com/new-york-city/spike-lee-on-why-brooklyn-has-a-starring-role-in-his-films/. [24] “Shelton ‘Spike’ Lee Bio,” Morehouse College, archived May 6, 2012, https://web.archive.org/web/20120506002442/https://www.morehouse.edu/about/boardbios/slee.html. [25] Neil McCormick, “Murder, Blackouts and a Hip-Hop Revolution: The Summer That Inspired The Get Down,” The Telegraph, August 12, 2016, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/on-demand/0/murder-blackouts-and-a-hip-hop-revolution-the-summer-that-inspir/. [26] Mediabistro, “Spike Lee: My First Big Break,” YouTube Video, YouTube, September 27, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1KEEbQeC-w. [27] Bennefield, “Why Brooklyn Has a Starring Role.” [28] She’s Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee (Santa Monica, CA: Island Pictures, 1986), Netflix Streaming, 00:01:00 – 00:02:13. (Opening montage, other examples can be found throughout the film). [29] Manthia Diawara, In Search of Africa, 2nd ed. (1998; repr., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 263, https://books.google.ca/books?id=eyTbwaEDTsUC. [30] School Daze, directed by Spike Lee (Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures, 1988), CTV Streaming. [31] Do the Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee, (1989; New York, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2019), Blu-ray, 01:38:50 – 01:38:57. [32] Malcolm X, directed by Spike Lee, (1992; Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., 2012), Blu-ray, 01:31:45 – 01:31:50. [33] Mo’ Better Blues, directed by Spike Lee, (1990; New York, NY: Kino Lorber, 2020) Blu-ray, 01:18:45 – 01:19:38. [34] Glenn Kenny, “Doing the Right Thing,” DGA Quarterly, Spring 2008, https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/0801-Spring-2008/DGA-Interview-Spike-Lee.aspx. [35] Malcolm X, 02:59:06 – 02:59:22. [36] BlacKkKlansman, directed by Spike Lee, (Universal City, CA: Focus Features LLC, 2018), Netflix Streaming, 02:05:38 – 02:05:55. [37] Do the Right Thing, 01:32:37, 01:53:55. [38] Malcolm X, 00:00:00 – 00:02:35, 01:59:30 – 02:02:25, 02:25:50 – 02:26:40, 03:07:20 – 03:10:40 (real news footage); Ibid., 02:02:40 – 02:02:45, 02:26:45 – 02:27:25, 02:32:25 – 02:33:35, 02:34:27 – 02:34:32, 02:43:35 – 02:45:45, 03:06:50 – 03:10:40 (black and white inserts). [39] When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, directed by Spike Lee (New York, NY: HBO, 2006), Crave Streaming. [40] BlacKkKlansman, 02:06:00 – 02:09:14. [41] Da Five Bloods, 00:00:05 – 00:02:50, 00:40:15 – 00:40:50 (anti-Vietnam protests); Ibid., 02:25:13 (MLK); Ibid., 0:19:02, 00:27:55 (stills). [42] David Byrne’s American Utopia, directed by Spike Lee, (New York, NY: HBO Films, 2020), Crave Streaming, 01:25:25 – 01:29:35.

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1917-1945: An Exploration of Interwar Cinema, its Social Impacts and Influences

          From frivolous pieces of escapist entertainment, to heavy, melodramatic, political commentaries, to state sponsored propaganda, the interwar period, leading into the Second World War, was truly a golden age for cinema as an art form, and as a narrative medium, not just in Hollywood, but around the globe. The omnipresence of technical and thematic innovation within the realm of film throughout the first half of the 20th century mirrors the social changes occurring in the world. In order to comprehend the atmosphere of a society, one must simply observe the art created by said society.

            Initially, motion pictures were used as a simple means of escapism, films by vaudevillian performers such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, continuing the traditions of their stage acts, using simple, yet timeless physical comedy to entertain the viewer, in a time before massive production budgets and cinematic expectations. Both Keaton and Chaplin’s work, however, quickly matured. As the roaring 20s progressed, and the world economy boomed, so demand for larger scale productions, bigger and better sets, and higher stakes. Though they maintained their Vaudeville camp, Chaplin’s seminal 1925 comedy The Gold Rush and Keaton’s 1926 film The General featured complex sets and matte paintings. The Gold Rush taking place primarily in the snowy mountains of the Yukon, the lavish wintery slopes were constructed in the backlots of Chaplin’s Studio. The General‘s action occurs primarily aboard a moving locomotive, even going so far as to blow up a bridge while the train crosses. Charlie Chaplin, of course, would go on to have a lengthy career as a Hollywood actor and director, but the time for thoughtless slapstick was nearing an end alongside the 1920s.

            Prior to the stock market crash of 1929, cinematic ventures began to tread into darker territories, as the age of Vaudeville in cinema came to a close. German director Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis marked a pivotal point for the art of the silent film. With overbearing themes of dystopian conformity, and oligarchic rule by aristocratic dictators, the film reflects Lang’s views on modernity, as well as idealistic and extremist politics. Though ahead of it’s time thematically and cinematically, the dystopia depicted in Metropolis harshly represented many of the fears held by the populace of the then unstable Weimar Republic. Continuing the trend of thematically darker movies spreading across Europe, Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc depicts the story in a ground-breaking feat of filmmaking and cinematography. This film helped push the dramatic genre from stage plays on film to cinematic motion pictures, and set the groundwork for films to come. Perhaps the most influential and emotionally poignant parts is the last act, a visual montage juxtaposing shots of Jeanne’s torture with the town festivities, eliciting visceral emotional reactions from the audience, regardless of their language or culture. The use of montage, however, made its debut in Russian propaganda, years prior.

            Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein first demonstrated the art of film montage in his 1925 experimental film Battleship Potemkin, about the 1905 Russian revolution cutting together various shots of crowds running down stairs, and cutting to close ups of a mother and her son, as they get separated, and the boy gets trampled. This horrifying scene is quickly intercut with shots of the enemy Cossacks, creating a parallel between the death of the innocent child and the army of Cossacks. This same technique is used in Einenstein’s later film October, another propaganda piece about the October Revolution. Sergei Einenstein and his soviet contemporaries were not the only film propogandists, however, nor were they the only artful propogandists, using their work to push advancements in the realm of cinema. In 1935, seven years after the release of October, Leni Riefenstahl releases her highly controversial Triumph of the Will to the German public. Commissioned by Adolf Hitler himself, who is billed as executive producer, this propaganda film artfully depicts the 1934 Nuremburg rally, a major gathering of Nazis and Nazi supporters. Pioneering new cinematographic techniques while using live footage from the rally, Triumph is widely considered to be one of the greatest propaganda pieces of all time.

            Of course, it wasn’t just the Soviets and the Germans producing propaganda, the United States created their fair share of propaganda as well, though none quite as innovative as that of the Soviets, or the Germans. Though the American government didn’t directly commission directors the way Hitler did, nor did they have filmmakers directly on their staff as did Stalin, they did heavily encourage many Hollywood producers to create films with triumphant, pro-ally messages, most of whom naturally complied. All the big studios of the era joined in, from more serious endeavours such as Casablanca, or Mrs. Miniver, too goofier flicks, like Walt Disney’s Der Fuehrer’s Face, or the Three Stooges’ You Nazty Spy! Even Charlie Chaplin joined in, creating his first ever talkie, a political satire starring himself as a fictionalized version of Hitler, Adenoid Hynkel. Though American propaganda films weren’t as direct, as innovative, or as poignant as their German and Russian counterparts, Hollywood nonetheless released some excellent pieces of cinema during the Second World War, both from and artistic and a historical standpoint.

            The manner in which a society depicts itself in art, whether self-critical, escapist, or propagandist, reflects the attitude of the society. From the optimistic escapades of the early 1920s, to the dystopian depictions of the Weimar Republic, from the experimental, nearly hypnotic propaganda pieces of totalitarian dictatorships, to the slightly more subtle American dramas and romances, containing pro-war elements, cinema encapsulates the emotions, philosophies, and outlook of it’s parent country at the time of release.

Works Cited:

The Battleship Potemkin. Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. Goskino, 1925.

The General. Dir. Buster Keaton. United Artists, 1926.

The Gold Rush. Dir. Charlie Chaplin. United Artists, 1925.

The Great Dictator. Dir. Charlie Chaplin. United Artists, 1940.

Marwick, Arthur, and Wendy Simpson. Primary Sources 2: Interwar and World War II. Milton Keynes: Open U, 2001. Print.

Metropolis. Dir. Fritz Lang. Reel Images, 1926.

The Passion of Joan of Arc. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer. Société Générale Des Films, 1928.

Taylor, Richard. Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1979.

Triumph of the Will. Dir. Leni Riefenstahl. 1934.

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Formal, Textual and Semiotic Analysis of the Death of Radio Raheem in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing

  This climactic two-minute clip from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989, 01:33:12 - 01:35:15) is a culmination of the film’s rising racial tensions. The confrontation begins as Radio Raheem, his signature boombox in hand, shows up to Sal’s Famous Pizzeria along with Buggin’ Out, and Smiley. These three fixtures of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood in Brooklyn, NY, where the film takes place, are here to demand that Sal put up images of Black people on his restaurant’s ‘Wall of Fame.’ Salvatore, the Italian-American proprietor of the Pizza joint that is a fixture of this predominantly Black and Puerto Rican neighbourhood, yells at the trio to “get the f**k out of [his] place,” flinging racial slurs at them. The group reaches a breaking point when Sal destroys Raheem’s Radio with a baseball bat. Raheem reciprocates by pulling Sal onto the ground of the Pizza joint, and an all-out fight breaks out.

  Our clip commences as Raheem pushes Sal out the door onto the street. The two are followed shortly by Sal’s sons Vito and Pino, delivery boy Mookie, Buggin’ Out, Smiley, and the rest of Sal’s patrons, who are already riled up after having heard Sal refer to Raheem and Buggin’ as “n****r motherf***ers.” From the very first shot of this scene, Lee sets up the chaotic mood of this sequence of events, using blocking, framing, and audio. Shooting from a low angle, DP Ernest Dickerson pulls back as Sal and Raheem come crashing through the door of the restaurant. Sal is pushed to the sidewalk, below the frame, such that the shot transfers to his POV. As everyone stumbles out behind Raheem and Sal, they pile onto them and rapidly consume the frame. The whole scene is backdropped by deafening crowd noises, except in two key moments where the relative silence of the crowd is used as a sort of punctuation. The use of chaotic mobile framing and blocking, combined with low key lighting and overwhelming noise, form an iconic relationship to the confusion and disarray in the narrative, serving to immerse the viewer in the turmoil of the scene.

  Once everyone has exited the restaurant, we are shown a series of primarily dutch-angled cutaways to the onlookers who have begun to gather. These dutch angles are used throughout the film and symbolically portray the neighbourhood as off-kilter, amidst the rising tensions influenced by the punishing New York heatwave. The high-tempo editing, with these cutaways lasting no more than five seconds, adds to the iconic portrayal of narrative chaos. They also bear an indexical link to the skirmish, which is now beginning to draw a large crowd. We are given a moment to breathe and take in the scene before being thrown back into the thick of it, as an establishing long crane shot pulls back from the newly formed crowd. In this shot, one of the longest in the scene both in terms of timing and distance, a billboard is revealed on the side of Sal’s building, advertising batteries with “Maximum Performance for Audio Devices,” a symbolic connection to Raheem’s prized boombox which looms over the scene of the fight.

  Da Mayor, a friendly drunk who serves as somewhat of a guardian for the neighbourhood, repeatedly yells to “break it up,” but the unsteady handheld camera and shallow depth of field, combined with the bustling crowd pushing him to and fro, causes him to come in and out of focus, a cinematographic symbol that his call for peace is to be unheeded. As Raheem continues to struggle against Sal, we begin to hear sirens in the distance, an index to the police cars that will soon arrive. This sound quickly drowns out the noise of the crowd. The next shot has the camera crane downward as a police car pulls up, ultimately taking over the shot with its imposing presence. To me, the moment we begin to hear sirens symbolizes impending doom.

  The shot of the cops arriving is followed by a series of shots of them pulling Raheem through the crowd, away from Sal. These close and medium-close shots average around 6-7 seconds and have a bustling and kinetic energy, with characters flailing around, ducking in and out of frame. Once again, Lee uses busy mobile framing and mise-en-scène as an icon for the absolute chaos we are witnessing. We briefly cut to a close up of Buggin’ Out’s hands as he is cuffed, an index to his arrest. He points out that while he, a Black man, is being arrested, they “ain’t taking Vito or Pino, or Sal,” who were also heavily embroiled in the scrap; a strong symbol of the racial injustice at play here.

  We now cut back to a handheld medium close up of Raheem and the two cops who are restraining him. One of them is now holding him by the neck with his baton. As he struggles to breathe, we see his “Bed-Stuy Do or Die” t-shirt, and his heart-shaped, pan-African coloured pendant. Raheem has thus come to symbolize the Bedford-Stuyvesant community and the livelihood of the Black community as a whole. In the background, we see a large mural that includes the American flag, the flag of Jamaica, the flag of Puerto Rico, and a pan-African flag. At the bottom of the mural is a group of people of diverse backgrounds all standing together, representing solidarity, unity and equality, with the flags as a symbol fand the figures at the bottom as an icon. This ideal of cultural unity is being refuted in direct and practical language as the white officer continues to strangle Raheem. In showing the chokehold in front of the mural, using shallow depth of field, the filmmakers make use of poetic symbolism, conveying the loss of focus, perspective, and morality that tends to arise when people are given too much authority and not enough oversight.

  The shot of Raheem being held by the neck lasts approximately 40-seconds, inter-cut every ten seconds or so with shots of onlookers begging the police to stop, saying that they’re killing him. As Raheem is brutalized by the police, we see his left-hand brass knuckle, which reads “HATE,” come in and out of view. This powerful symbol alludes to the hatred and systematic racism ingrained in law enforcement institutions. As the shot progresses, the handheld camera slowly and unevenly pushes in towards Raheem. Dickerson once again allows at centre frame to fall in and out of focus using shallow depth of field. In combination with a fade out of the crowd noise, this loss of focus serves as an icon for Raheem’s fading consciousness. Before the final cutaway to Buggin’, we see a high angled close up on Raheem’s dangling feet. The feet, an index to Raheem, flail about desperately until they finally come to a stop. Buggin’ calls out, “Radio Raheem!” We cut back one last time to Raheem as he goes limp and is dropped to the ground. Radio Raheem is dead.

  The final shot of the clip starts with a low angle of officer Mark, with a squad car monopolizing frame left. In the background is one of the brownstone buildings emblematic of this area of Brooklyn, as well as a group of onlookers. Raheem falls rapidly into frame, blocking off the background, leaving only himself, the cop and his car, and Buggin’ Out being restrained by two other cops at the right of the frame. This poetic framing and figure movement seems to suggest that the whole community has been metaphorically crushed by the weight of Radio Raheem’s murder. The close-up frames Raheem’s right-hand brass knuckle, which reads “LOVE,” front and centre. This symbol is carefully and deliberately highlighted through the cinematography and mise-en-scène. Spike Lee is telling us that despite the hatred and institutionalized violence against Black Americans that have caused Raheem’s death, his love for his people will not be taken for granted; he will serve as a martyr to his community, as we see in the films conclusion.