Critique Of Spike Lee

& # 8217 ; s & # 8220 ; Jungle Fever & # 8221 ; Essay, Research Paper

A Sociological Critique of Spike Lee & # 8217 ; s

& # 8220 ; Jungle Fever & # 8221 ;

Liana R. Prieto ( April 1998 )

Spike Lee? s Jungle Fever is non a alone cultural production, but a contemplation of splintered facets of existent life. It depicts relationships between African-Americans and Italian-Americans focus oning on one interracial relationship. The movie is every bit much a review of urban life in New York City as an scrutiny of interracial relationships. It presents a black image of metropolis life full of stereotypes where no racial group can, or of all time will, be able to accept interracial relationships in a rational, peaceable manner. This is a perspective viewing audiences might non anticipate from a minority manager, but it goes to demo that Hollywood movie, irrespective of the cultural or racial group of the Godhead, is non a progressive societal force. However, Spike Lee does raise assorted relevant sociological issues: favoritism, criminal conversation, societal mobility, and the successful black adult male? s perceived penchant for white adult females, Lee fails to explicate, or even link, them in a meaningful manner.

Lee makes his position of interracial relationships rather clear in Jungle Fever. He made the really calculated pick of doing the relationship non merely interracial, but extramarital and, hence, doomed to failure. As Cyrus, Flipper? s best friend, Lee equates a relationship between an Afro-american and an Italian-American to the atomic devastation of the universe. When Flipper is stoping his matter he tells his lover he has come to the decision that interracial relationships are based entirely on wonder and ne’er on love. Lee condemns interracial personal businesss and dismisses the construct of a happy interracial relationship as an impossibleness that could merely happen in sketchs. Lee efficaciously demonstrates his position of interracial? love? , but in making so raises many other valid issues that he does non turn to.

Spike Lee leaves his viewing audiences, who do non hold personal cognition of New York, inquiring what societal and economic forces and tendencies have led to the fortunes faced by his characters. A treatment of world in New York City would take us to see how many groups are non represented in this movie. Brooklyn, a comparatively little infinite, has one of the most diverse cultural and racial composings found anyplace in the United States. Despite this fact, there is non one character that is non Italian-American or Afro-american. Hispanics, Jews, Asians, Irish, and countless other racial and cultural groups are non represented anyplace in the movie. The fact that Jungle Fever is about merely two groups and ignores their inevitable day-to-day interaction with other groups is another presentation of his cultural pluralist position. I find this narrow position to be a terrible disability on his story-telling capacities because a battalion of meaningful experiences is excluded taking to a presentation of oversimplified & # 8220 ; worlds & # 8221 ; .

Within the two groups that Lee does try to picture in item, stereotypes dominate. Angie? s household is presented as a group of semi-Neanderthal work forces who expect her to wait on them and crush her when she is disobedient. The vicinity work forces, with the exclusion of Pauly, are all unemployed racialists incapable of expressing a sentence that does non include an expletive, a racial slur, or some combination of the two. Drew and her friends are shown as bitter, oppressed Afro-american adult females who feel they are superior to Afro-american work forces. The conversation revolves around the thought that the few? good? Afro-american work forces are tempted off from them by? easy? white adult females. Though that treatment does convey up true points about the figure of Afro-american work forces in gaol and their involuntariness to settle down ( due to possibly the unequal sex ratio in which adult females outnumber work forces ) , it perpetuates many more myths than truths.

The economic forms presented in the movie besides leave many inquiries unanswered. Three imitations of socioeconomic groups appear in Jungle Fever: upwards mobile African-Americans, crack-smoking African-Americans, and propertyless Italian-Americans. Flipper, his married woman Drew and their friends are economically comfortable. Gator, Flipper? s brother, leads the film into the cleft underworld. One unavoidabl

e inquiry is why high in-between category African americans are populating merely a few blocks from decrepit cleft houses? Is it due to favoritism in obtaining lodging in suburban area? Is it because they want to remain in Harlem where their race is the bulk? Angie, Flipper? s white lover, and the people in her vicinity are? typical? lower in-between category Whites in the interior metropolis. They are unemployed, lazy, uneducated and bigoted. Is their colored based on the altering racial composing of their vicinity as characterized by Lauren Good? Are they merely perpetuating the rhythm of favoritism they were capable to by WASPs at the beginning of this century? Do they experience affirmatory action and such plans have been designed to advance other racial and cultural groups to a societal position better than their ain? Without firsthand cognition of the socioeconomic state of affairs in New York, these inquiries will non be answered.

The many mentions to existent events in New York City do non hold Lee? s intended impact on a spectator if the spectator is non familiar with his mentions. The first of these mentions is the dedication of the film to Yusuf Hawkins. It is non common cognition that this Afro-american young person was murdered by a group of white goons when he went to a party in Bensonhurst. When Angie is stating her friends about her matter with Flipper the incident arises once more. One of her friends advises her non to convey Flipper anyplace near the vicinity because the last clip an Afro-american male came to the vicinity with a white female there was? problem? .

A ulterior scene shows Flipper up against the wall with a white New York Police Department officer keeping a gun to his caput. If the spectator was non cognizant of the long record of police ferociousness against minorities, he/she could compose this scene off as a rare event. One of the treatments of the Italian-Americans in Pauly? s confect shop besides turns to real-life events. What begins as a treatment about David Dinkins, New York City? s first Afro-american city manager, and his faults terminals as an indictment of all inkinesss due to the actions of Marion Barry and the Central Park jogger rapers. All of these thoughts are powerful, but they lose the impact of their significance if non in the context of the existent universe from which Spike Lee snatched them, patching them back together in a apparently random manner.

The technique of utilizing a warped world to do a point is non new to Hollywood. Jungle Fever sends the message to viewing audiences that metropoliss are topographic points were all sorts of people live in close propinquity but are unable to interact without struggle about cultural differences. Minority groups do non hold much pick in how they are portrayed, even when the film maker is a minority, due to the preconceived prejudices of American society. Changeless racial and cultural struggle and the prevalence of negative stereotypes should really be expected in movie being that Hollywood is the merchandise, non the cause, of racist American society. Biass against minority groups are displayed in but they are non conceived by film makers. We as a state have created Hollywood, prejudices and all. Racism, favoritism and ignorance have been portion of the United States? history long earlier movie. I doubt that if merely films demoing harmonious relationships among racial and cultural groups were produced, the universe would be transformed into a conflict-free Utopia. The support of these thoughts in films, nevertheless, does doubtless hold some negative influence on attitudes towards minorities.

Spike Lee? s aim is to supply a cultural pluralist position. He recognizes the difference between racial and cultural groups and their right to keep their cultural singularity. He supports the being of these differences to the point that the commixture of civilizations seems to be an forsaking of individuality that should ne’er happen. Lee believes dealingss between different cultural and racial groups can be harmonious so long as they do non affect love affair, and finally, ? half-breed? kids. This thought is non his ain, but one shared by the much of the American populace. Though Spike Lee, as an Afro-american manager, might be expected to show positions differing from the remainder of Hollywood, he supports racial segregation when it comes to love.

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