Spike Lee Does the Right Thing

This past Monday we all took some time off to celebrate the great black leader, Martin Luther King Jr.  One of the many gems in Reverend King’s speeches was: “It is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of high maturity, to rise to the level of self-criticism.”  As Robert L. Woodson, an American civil rights activist, recently pointed out in an article in the Wall Street Journal, it is sometimes necessary for leaders to confront the enemy within.  He goes on to say that black families have suffered from the moral decay so essential to their well-being.

Like Mahatma Ghandi in India, Martin Luther King Jr. did not advocate violence but rather non-violence as a means of social protest.  Roland Fryer, a black economist and professor at Harvard University, has written that Reverend King understood some black protests to have been rooted in violence.  Reverend King claimed violence, as a means of protest, would alienate many white people from supporting black causes such as civil rights.  Years ago, I remember, a woman that was dating a friend of mine comment on a black protest that turned into violence and mayhem in the Los Angeles area.  Her reaction to the violence was: “I really am giving up on black causes.”  It is important to realize that this woman was neither a racist nor a segregationist.  The destruction done to communities in and around Los Angeles televised throughout the country apparently had made her uneasy and uncertain about protesters’ aims.

Fryer, in his column, addressed the brilliance of Martin Luther King Jr, in his employing a non-violent means of protest, to change public opinion.  The underlying point is that non-violent protest showed a Democratic increase in support of civil-rights protests in the 1960’s.  However, violent protests had had the opposite effect precipitating media coverage to “law and order” candidates typically from the Republican party.  Accordingly, Martin Luther King Jr. had the insight and wisdom to understand the forces behind behavior change that would have a positive influence on the American public.

Spike Lee’s latest film, “Highest 2 Lowest,” points to a healthy evolution in his role as a director.  Lee never has been shy about highlighting the impact of societal racial issues at the root of the problems blacks face in their everyday lives.  For example, his film, Jungle Fever, demonstrated quite clearly the negative social impact of interracial dating had on the couple depicted in that picture.  The movie reminded us of the theme in the play, Romeo and Juliet, and the very well received theatrical and subsequent movie release of West Side Story.  The theme to all three of these works was the insurmountable barrier that confronts couples in love when they come from different ethnic and cultural groups.  Eventually the couple represented in Spike Lee’s film, a male black architect and an Italian American woman, are overwhelmed by the societal and personal tensions they experience during their relationship.

Lee’s film, Malcolm X, was both an accurate and wonderful portrayal of Malcolm X’s life as depicted in his autobiography, coauthored by Alex Haley.  The destructive racial outbursts Malcolm X had to bear are graphically shown in Spike Lee’s movie.  The impact of these abuses on his life and, the struggle he countenanced in raising himself above the violence of the racial oppression he was exposed to are central to Malcom X’s story.  One can begin to understand Malcolm X’s hostile reactions to white society by knowing that two of his early childhood homes were burned down by white supremacists.

Lee’s underscoring of racial issues came to a head in his film:  Do the Right Thing.  In this picture, Lee’s message to the public appeared to be that black outrage and violence were the only ways of dealing with the racial oppression that confront so many Afro-Americans.  The script title, Do the Right Thing, gave substance and meaning to blacks fighting back with violence to correct the injustice and violence brought on by white hatred toward them.

Lee’s latest work Highest 2 Lowest, a screenplay he adapted from an earlier film, High and Low, made by the famous Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa, offers a more complex view of what it means to be an Afro-American.  The protagonist in this film is Denzel Washington, who gave an unforgettable performance as Malcolm X in Lee’s earlier movie.  The two of these men, as they did earlier, appear to reinforce each other’s greatness in movie making.  Rather than give the plot away spoiling a movie well worth seeing for those who have yet to view it, I will discuss some of the underlying themes that emerge in this film.

Inasmuch as the film’s cast is almost entirely that of black actors, racial oppression by white society is no longer the core of Highest 2 Lowest.   Rather it deals more with class conflict and the moral pressures amongst Afro-Americans in vying for success and fame.  In the movie, Denzel Washington plays a successful entrepreneur of music, the Highest, while ASAP Rocky, is a rap singer, the Lowest, that kidnaps the best friend of Washington’s son.  His purpose is to make Washington pay a ransom if he wishes the safe return of this boy.

Unlike the Kurosawa film, Denzel Washington, and not the police or legal authorities, is central in bringing home justice.  The two of them participate in a confrontation where rap takes the forestage (ASAP Rocky, among other things, is a rapper in real life).  During their clash, Washington pleads with ASAP Rocky not to go down the same road as his wayward father.  Here Lee is focusing on the issue so many blacks face when their father goes astray, a problem he never had to face because he was raised in an intact family in Brooklyn by both parents. 

Washington has likewise pointed to the importance of intact families being a huge asset in the raising of our children and how often, the black father is absent.  He has been quoted in saying the following: “If the father is not in the home, the boy will find a father in the streets.  If the streets raise you, then the judge becomes your mother and prison becomes your home.”

In Highest 2 Lowest, Lee has gone beyond racial oppression in addressing some of the problems that exist within black society.  Some film critics have viewed Lee’s movie as a shift to a more conservative stance insofar as the external societal oppressors of what progressives’ label as systemic racism is not a primary feature of this film.  I think they are mistaken in putting a political label on Lee’s work.  A more accurate perception of Highest 2 Lowest is that the film concentrates more on problems within the black culture as opposed to outside forces.  In this sense, Lee is following the advice of Martin Luther King Jr. who pointed to the value of self-criticism, a viewpoint most difficult to adhere to when discussing one’s own race, ethnic group or culture.  The black community has looked up to Spike Lee, as a most successful Afro-American director, who has not been influenced by outside societal forces.  I hope they, as well as the rest of us, take the time to see this most noteworthy movie.