Remember When Spike Lee Made Movies?

Remember When Spike Lee Made Movies?

HE STILL GOT GAME?: Spike Lee’s new film, ‘Red Hook Summer,’ which explores religion and urban life in a Brooklyn neighborhood, is his first movie to be released during Barack Obama’s presidency. (Photo: David Lee/Newscom)

Director Spike Lee had not released a film during the Obama presidency until this week’s release of Red Hook Summer, just a couple months before the next presidential election.

Remember Spike Lee? This was the man who helmed groundbreaking, commercially successful films on race like Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, and Do the Right Thing. When he arrived on the scene with 1986’s She’s Gotta Have It, he was hailed as a brave new voice in American filmmaking and the chronicler of the late 20th century black experience. As time has gone by, his films have become less urgent and far less racial. His only hit in this century was 2006’s Inside Man, a heist movie that happened to star Denzel Washington but was in no way a serious work on race. And in the last four years — since Obama has been president — he has not released a movie, period.

During his presidential campaign, Obama positioned himself as the first post-racial candidate. He made us believe that by voting for him we would usher in a new era in which labels like “black” and “white” would grow increasingly irrelevant. He was, of course, uniquely positioned to make this argument, given his background; the effect of his personal story and his rhetoric on this topic was intoxicating. He made affluent whites feel that by simply voting for him they were accomplishing more for black people than we had as a nation since the Civil Rights Act. With their vote, they would cleanse America of its original sin.

But despite that unspoken promise, many Americans remain in a state of de facto segregation. Most whites don’t know the black experience, and what they do know, they learn from the media. Electing a black president has not changed that. In some ways, it has made things worse, since the issue of race is barely discussed in public forums. When black issues are discussed, it is usually in a historically comparative sense. The civil rights era is used today as a point of comparison to discuss immigration issues or the rights of the LGBT community.

Despite the lack of conversation on the subject, there is no doubt that Obama’s election changed the way we look at and talk about race in America. Obama himself said it best in his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention:

[T]here’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.

In retrospect, that moment was the beginning of Obama’s ascendance to the presidency. It was also the first time he explicitly defined himself as a post-racial candidate. And lastly, it was the end of director Spike Lee’s career. For if there is no black America, what happens to the filmmaker whose job it has been to chronicle it?

The Mainstreaming of Racial Transcendence

Lee’s first true masterpiece was 1989’s Do the Right Thing, a drama that took place over the course of one sweltering summer day in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a predominantly black neighborhood. In a key scene, our black protagonist, Mookie, argues with a white colleague, Pino, about race. Mookie questions how Pino can admire some African Americans — like Prince, Eddie Murphy, and Magic Johnson — but disdain those that live in his community. Listen to his response:

The 1980s, when Prince, Eddie, and Magic reigned supreme, was the era in which the idea of racial transcendence was mainstreamed. And they were not alone. In that decade, black stars Michael Jordan and Bill Cosby were welcomed into the homes of middle-class, white Americans on a regular basis. Cosby eschewed serious discussion of race on his hit television show for fear of losing his audience. The problems that the Huxtables faced were those common in upper-middle class American families. Never did the show discuss poverty, HIV/AIDS, or serious drug use, each of them an epidemic in 1980s black America.

Jordan, the NBA icon, similarly protected his brand by staying mum on racial politics. When asked why he did not weigh in on a close Senate race in his home state of North Carolina that involved former KKK-member Jesse Helms, he responded, “Republicans buy shoes, too.”

The generation that grew up on The Cosby Show and Michael Jordan is the same one that elevated Barack Obama to the White House, and there is much evidence to suggest that they were subconsciously linked in the minds of voters. Obama, like Jordan, made his name in Chicago and exhibited in his campaign the same calm under pressure that made Jordan the best to play the game of basketball. Of course Obama, a big sports fan, never hesitated to bring up his fandom of the Bulls. As for the Cosby connection, many newspapers wrote, when describing Obama’s high polling numbers with white, suburban voters, of the “Huxtable effect.”

Even his future running mate, Joe Biden, said of Obama that he was the first African American candidate who was “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” In other words, he was not what Joe Biden usually thought of when he thought of “black.” The fact that Biden’s remark did not prevent him from becoming Obama’s vice-president should be evidence enough that Obama is more concerned with appealing to white than black audiences.

Ultimately, there is no industry that has been more eager to accept the notion of racial transcendence than Hollywood; it’s an idea that is useful to filmmakers who are increasingly pressured to make films with crossover demographic appeal. But this quest for widespread popularity has a dark side.

Lord, Help Our Blind Sides

The films of Obama’s first term portray racial disharmony in an antiquated, conclusory fashion, making everyone feel good about race without asking audiences to lift a finger or even have an uncomfortable thought. Two such films, The Blind Side and The Help, were not only massive box-office hits but also were nominated for Best Picture by the mostly white Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Blind Side and The Help connect to white Americans because they reflect the feeling Obama created during the campaign — that America had done something important to help African Americans. Exposed in these films to the problems of black America, audiences leave the theater feeling that the drama in the film has been resolved — in each case by a white, affluent character.

In The Help, that character is Skeeter (Emma Stone), a young, ambitious Southern woman who breaks convention by writing a book that compiles the horrible, sometimes hilarious stories of local black housekeepers. Skeeter is, for all intents and purposes, a modern woman and seems completely out of place in early 1960s Mississippi. She wants to work, not marry. She despises any form of prejudice, which is odd because most of her friends are unbashed racists. Skeeter is an accessible and sympathetic entry point into the story for a modern, white audience, but the implication in her characterization is troubling. She helps an entire community of oppressed African Americans housekeepers by giving them a voice. She is, in a small way, freeing them. The implication is that the politics of today — represented in this modern woman — have rectified the politics of the past, and in this way, “The Help” asks us to believe that race is no longer an issue in America, as long as there are millions of young Skeeters out there.

It is a similar story in The Blind Side, which was based on true events. Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy, a strong, willful Southern housewife who takes Michael Oher, a poor black young man, into her home and teaches him to assimilate into white society, represented by a large football program at a southern state university.

We share Leigh’s sadness when we hear of Michael’s poor upbringing. But we are also asked to be thrilled when she takes the “street” out of him. A pivotal moment comes when he tells her that he hates being called “Big Mike,” the nickname he has been saddled with since childhood. He prefers being called “Michael.” In this moment, he transcends his previous existence in a poor, African American community. It is almost as if he is casting off his slave name.

In both films, the central African American characters are rescued from the bonds of the black experience, yet there is little care taken to relay what happens to them afterwards. The real Michael went on to play in the NFL, a profession in which ex-players are increasingly suffering from mental illness and suicide — due to the high number of concussions they suffer during their career. Given the opportunities afforded to him by living with Leigh Anne and her rich husband, perhaps a career as a modern-day gladiator was not the finest choice, but it is in reality the best choice for some who grow up in inner cities without education.

In the final scene of The Help, Aibeleen, the middle-aged housekeeper whose story we have been following, is fired by her boss. As she walks away from her home, she tells us that she feels free for the first time and that she never took a similar job again. But she never shares with us how she earned a living. It is as if not working for an oppressive white boss is enough; but what will she do with her newfound freedom? What other jobs exist for a middle-aged black woman with no education or experience? These are the questions that are not asked in a post-racial film, and they are questions that have not been asked enough by our current post-racial president.

Blacks continue to suffer from the highest rates of poverty, unemployment, obesity, death from cancer, and infant mortality. But Obama has done little to improve federal nutrition programs. He has stood idly by while Republicans cut food stamp benefits. He has extended the Bush tax cuts that favor the wealthy and refused to tackle a tax reform plan that does not continue to burden the poor. He has been nearly invisible on education. And he has been worse than that on “the War on Drugs.”

Of course most of these are not racial issues, per se. They are class and economic issues. And this is the problem with a post-racial president. Because of how he framed his candidacy, Obama allowed middle and upper-class whites to bump the issue of racism far down their list of urgent American problems and, in doing so, gave them the liberty to ignore the class issues that so disproportionately affect minorities.

Where Art Thou, Spike?

And so with the black experience so far from our minds these days, the skills of Spike Lee have just not been called for. In fairness, his problems getting funding for his films have not solely been the result of a post-racial environment. His most recent feature films about the black experience (She Hate Me and Bamboozled) have been wildly uneven and even more controversial than normal.

So instead, Lee took his talents to cable. In 2008, the year Obama was elected, Lee produced and directed When the Levees Broke, a powerful and urgent two-part documentary on Hurricane Katrina that focused specifically on how the disaster affected poor, black communities in New Orleans. It was an important film that exposed suffering that had been glossed over by the mainstream media. But he had to make it at HBO, which is not beholden to ratings or ticket sales, and it’s doubtful that a major studio would ever have sponsored such a project or that most of American has even heard of it.

That brings us to Lee’s latest film, Red Hook Summer, in which he reprises his role of Mookie from Do the Right Thing. But interestingly, the film is not about race. Its subject is religion, which may have replaced race as the divisive American institution of the day. Even Red Hook Summer has obtained only a miniscule distribution. You will have to live in a major urban area to see it.

And so Lee appears to be a casualty of post-racialism, albeit one that no one will cry any tears for. He has made his millions. But as a reflection of white perception of the black experience, his disappearance is a real loss. We have lost a powerful voice for the poor and a filmmaker who made visible that which society tries to hide. He could have been Obama’s counterpoint from the left, someone who pushed him away from his comfortable spot in the center. Instead, next year Lee is remaking Oldboy, a hyper-violent Japanese thriller. If it does well enough, maybe someone will give him a chance to make a serious movie again. In the meantime, we will wait patiently and simply hope that our original sin is not just hidden or dormant but truly redeemed by a single election.

This article originally appeared at Noah Gittell’s Reel Change blog.

Meeting Dad in Bill Milliken’s Rearview Mirror

Meeting Dad in Bill Milliken’s Rearview Mirror

URBAN YOUTH MINISTRY PIONEERS: In a photo that hangs in Bill Milliken’s office, Vinnie Di Pasquale (center) and friends walk the streets of New York.

A couple weeks ago, I received a book in the mail that was endorsed by music mogul Russell Simmons, Oprah Winfrey beau Stedman Graham, Morehouse College President Robert Franklin, and, among others, the actress Goldie Hawn. The author included this note: “Dear Christine, I thank God for you and your faithfulness!! I loved your mother and father!!”

After the foreword written by Newark Mayor Cory Booker and an introductory letter that the author addresses to his grandchildren, he opens with these words: “Vinnie De Pasquale and I had been waiting for this day for many months. It was June 17, 1960, and we were about to move into a two-room tenement apartment at 117th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, New York. Vinnie had recently gotten out of jail, and I’d just finished the second of what would be my three freshman years of college.”

Vinnie Di Pasquale is my father and the book is From the Rearview Mirror: Reflecting on Connecting the Dots. Urban youth ministry pioneer Bill Millken is the author. His memoir tells the remarkable story of how he, an affluent, but ne’er do-well kid from the suburbs of Pittsburgh had his life transformed at the same Colorado Young Life camp as my father. From there Milliken went on to establish Young Life’s ministry in New York City and later founded the Communities in Schools organization in Atlanta. His book says he has been an advisor to five U.S. presidents, but the highlight, for me, is how he frames the work he did with my father and others in New York City as the foundation of all his future endeavors.

It’s a deeply humbling experience, as the daughter of a high school janitor, to read such a thing. My father died of a heart attack at age 41 in 1975 and the only stories I’ve heard about his work with Young Life come from my mother’s memories. Those years were very difficult ones for her. As I wrote previously for UrbanFaith, she and my father met through Young Life. What I didn’t write is that after my sister was born with significant medical challenges in 1963 and my mother became seriously ill while pregnant with me in 1964, our family left New York City and urban ministry.

I had no idea, for example, that in 1998 a cover story about my father was published in the Young Life Relationships magazine. But last week, long-time Young Life leader Mal McSwain contacted me through UrbanFaith to say he wanted to send me photos and letters from my father that date back to 1957. The Relationships article was included in the package (along with an excerpt from Zondervan’s God in the Garden: The Story of the Billy Graham New York Crusade that tells a bit of my father’s story). In the article, McSwain talks about meeting Vinnie and his fellow Newark, New Jersey, gang members when he was a camp counselor in Colorado. Reflecting on the significance of that summer, he says, “We didn’t know what had hit us in ‘56. These guys were the real thing. This was only the beginning. It opened the door to Young Life’s urban ministry.”

I love reading these stories because my father died before I was old enough to hear them from him. But he never entirely broke free of his past, as all the narratives I’ve read about him suggest. Until the time of his death, he continued to struggle with the pull of behaviors he learned on the streets of Newark. And yet, he also never gave up on his journey of faith, or on his desire to reach out to young people and help them find a better way.

Milliken writes that through his work in schools, he came to learn how important custodians are to those communities. I distinctly remember my father’s mentoring relationships with students at the high school in Manasquan, New Jersey, where he worked. Those relationships were so significant that after he collapsed and died playing basketball there, the senior class dedicated its yearbook to him and honored him at its graduation ceremony.

What I loved best about Milliken’s memoir, apart from being reintroduced to my father through his eyes, is how he talks about his own lifelong need for healing. Mixed in with stories like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis arranging an internship for her son John Jr. with his organization are stories of his own brokenness and pursuit of healing. The final chapter has Milliken seeking medical treatment for post-traumatic stress symptoms and severe gastrointestinal distress brought on by decades of overwork in urban ministry. “I’ve spent the last three years trying to lead a more balanced life,” he writes, and then explains that the reason he’s confessing these things is that he wants readers to know that “the healing journey is never finished.” “All my hurting places, limitations, and shames aren’t just distant memories. They’re still with me, still clearly visible,” he says.

There’s a penetrating lesson for me in this. While I have wonderful memories of my father’s creativity as a photographer and craftsman, of camping trips on Cape Cod, and raucous get-togethers with his extended family, I also have memories of marital tension related to his struggles. The written story of his life sometimes seems to make him out to be worse than perhaps he was before his conversion and better than he was afterward. It’s a trend in conversion stories that we should rethink. We all live with ongoing brokenness and in perpetual need of God’s healing touch. Bill Milliken makes this clear in his memoir. It is true for him, just as it was true for my late father and my late son, both of whom affirmed their faith in Christ right before they died despite ongoing spiritual struggles. It’s true for me too, in part because of their untimely deaths.

God has a funny way of ministering healing though. Sometimes it comes through strangers who send packages via the U.S. Postal Service. In a letter to Young Life supporters from 1965 that McSwain sent me, my father wrote, “Three years ago I married a fine Christian girl named Carol. We have been richly blessed with two lovely daughters, Connie and Christine. We thank God every day as we see them grow physically, but our greatest hope is that they may grow up with God in their hearts.” Daddy, I’m happy to report that your prayers have been answered.