Spike Lee
Spike Lee. Wesley Mann / August Image
“Always do the right thing.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“I got it. I’m gone.”
DA MAYOR (Ossie Davis) and Mookie (Spike Lee) share this exchange in Lee’s film Do the Right Thing, which turns 30 this summer. Three decades on, Lee’s masterpiece on racism and community still stands out for its trailblazing voice. Lee, and the film that blasted him into broad public consciousness, continue to inspire powerful work by filmmakers of color, including Dear White People, Get Out, and The Hate U Give.
It’s undeniable that Do the Right Thing’s bold style and perspective are what helped it become iconic. Its depiction of the police killing of black men also remains powerful and, as it turned out, prescient. The film almost seems to have predicted events that unfolded 25 years later following the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and so many others.
Image via Chi-Raq The Movie.com.
Spike Lee didn’t plan Chi-Raq’s release to coincide with a year in which the number of mass shooting on record surpassed the number of days in the year thus far . Nobody could have expected that days before the film’s release, the shooting in San Bernadino, Calif., would push the gun debate to (another) boiling point, with cries for legislative action in addition to the frequent “thoughts and prayers” of politicians.
That most people are Chi-Raq with the shootings in California fresh in their minds is a coincidence — one which makes the film’s message all the more immediate.
Chi-Raq is a satirical drama, a modern retelling of the ancient Greek Lysistrata. In Lee’s version of the story, Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris of Dear White People) is the girlfriend of Chi-Raq (Nick Cannon), a rapper and gang leader on the south side of Chicago. He’s also in the midst of a war with Cyclops (Wesley Snipes), the leader of a rival gang. When a young girl in the neighborhood is killed by a stray bullet, Lysistrata rallies women affiliated on both sides of the gang war to demand peace by denying their men sex.
What starts as a protest becomes a movement, taking the city of Chicago and the world by storm.
Spike Lee is not about to give up filmmaking but – at least for a moment or two – he sounded a bit like an expert on the challenges facing the church as he promoted his new movie Red Hook Summer.
“Any church whose members are senior citizens and there’s no youth coming behind, they’re going to die out,” Lee said in a roundtable discussion with reporters.
“Now that goes for synagogues, mosques, temples too — any institution,” Lee continued. “You got to always try to have that infusion of youth. They might not be as smart but youth has energy.”