BlackKklansman
Aug. 26th, 2018 01:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby Who's seen it? Who wants to talk about it?
I just came back from seeing it with four friends, all of whom had very different reactions. I read Boots Riley's critique and agree on a textual and economic level, and also I think Sorry To Bother You is a better movie both philosophically and technically. But I also have a soft spot for Spike Lee and I think he's far too clever by half to have made a movie that's as obvious as BlackKklansman seems to be on the surface.
The critical part, I believe, is where Ron and Patrice discuss Blaxploitation movies (admit it; you knew it was going to come down to 70s film tropes with me). Specifically, Patrice has no problem liking fictional cops, because Blaxploitation presents a fantasy of justice that is drastically different than anything in real life—but she still objects to pimps, because the image of the pimp, both in fiction and reality, is harmful to Black liberation. Ron, though based on a real person, is a fictionalized character; he represents in Lee's narrative something comparable to Blaxploitation cops in terms of an avatar of justice.
And then that's subverted. At least two of my friends objected to the scene where the overtly racist cop is arrested because of how ridiculously unbelievable it was. For me, the unbelievability is the whole point. It's shot like a dream sequence and is meant to be read as a dream sequence. This is not justice; it's the fantasy of justice, and it's destroyed immediately when the department shuts the Klan investigation down, Ron doesn't get the girl after all because she chooses her principles over him, the Klan burns a cross outside their window, and the modern day footage of Charlottesville shows that the battle was never really won. All this with a truly great visual nod to 70s cinema, in case you forgot about the earlier conversation. I actually thought it was the strongest part of the movie. It's telling you that the fantasy of the cinematic depiction of cops is just that, a fantasy, divorced from the real-life racist institution. The part of this story that's not based on a true story is not the incidents themselves, or characters invented for the film; it's the notion of objective and unbiased justice.
At any rate. It is not a perfect movie by any means, but at least on first viewing, I think its flaws are not quite what people think they are.
I just came back from seeing it with four friends, all of whom had very different reactions. I read Boots Riley's critique and agree on a textual and economic level, and also I think Sorry To Bother You is a better movie both philosophically and technically. But I also have a soft spot for Spike Lee and I think he's far too clever by half to have made a movie that's as obvious as BlackKklansman seems to be on the surface.
The critical part, I believe, is where Ron and Patrice discuss Blaxploitation movies (admit it; you knew it was going to come down to 70s film tropes with me). Specifically, Patrice has no problem liking fictional cops, because Blaxploitation presents a fantasy of justice that is drastically different than anything in real life—but she still objects to pimps, because the image of the pimp, both in fiction and reality, is harmful to Black liberation. Ron, though based on a real person, is a fictionalized character; he represents in Lee's narrative something comparable to Blaxploitation cops in terms of an avatar of justice.
And then that's subverted. At least two of my friends objected to the scene where the overtly racist cop is arrested because of how ridiculously unbelievable it was. For me, the unbelievability is the whole point. It's shot like a dream sequence and is meant to be read as a dream sequence. This is not justice; it's the fantasy of justice, and it's destroyed immediately when the department shuts the Klan investigation down, Ron doesn't get the girl after all because she chooses her principles over him, the Klan burns a cross outside their window, and the modern day footage of Charlottesville shows that the battle was never really won. All this with a truly great visual nod to 70s cinema, in case you forgot about the earlier conversation. I actually thought it was the strongest part of the movie. It's telling you that the fantasy of the cinematic depiction of cops is just that, a fantasy, divorced from the real-life racist institution. The part of this story that's not based on a true story is not the incidents themselves, or characters invented for the film; it's the notion of objective and unbiased justice.
At any rate. It is not a perfect movie by any means, but at least on first viewing, I think its flaws are not quite what people think they are.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-27 12:26 am (UTC)No one knew about the actual operation until 30 years after the fact, so let's be real, showing it have any actual impact was always going to be fantasy. Policing is always reactive, so by the time a Klan investigation starts it means you've already got nazis, and there's a huge chance they're on your force because fascists gravitate to exploitable power. The films move from victory to defeat shows the dangerous fantasy of policing as heroic action; the horse is already out of the barn by the time they're closing the doors.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-27 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-27 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-27 11:09 am (UTC)My take isn't even Spike Lee's defence, so take with a grain of salt.