English Comp II
Final Research Paper Draft
May 26, 2013
Spike Lee: His Visions
The director Spike Lee uses his characters to show a different picture of African Americans to the movie going public. Like the African American struggle, the real drama African Americans do face, cultural issues, and the black urban world as a whole. What’s most interesting about Lee’s vision, is its deep, multidimensional complexity. Spike Lee’s thought provoking films have amused and confronted viewers around the world. On one hand, his films often encourage viewers and critics to identify what is on the screen with an essential blackness; or a “Black Thing”. Using critical philosophies, you might find new ideas in Lee’s cinematography techniques and strong character’s.
Spike Lee has been stated in saying. He wanted to be a “black separatist with a movie camera” and certainly the course of his films capture the nuanced and convincing stories of the black world. The thread of African American history is spun from two sources: the struggle to define a place in the wider American life and the effort to maintain an authentic black presence in the larger American culture. In an online film article entitled “ Doing the Right Thing: A “ Free Will” Conundrum,” Jason Dias analyzes, “ In a deterministic universe, everything that has happened had to happen because that action conformed to the laws of physics. Every decision we made we were conditioned to make and acted out unconsciously; later justifying that decision as conscious and intentional and right or lamenting it” (Dias).
In the film School Daze released in February 1988 the underlining theme of this movie is about a fraternity and sorority clashing with other students at a historically black college during homecoming weekend. It touches on real issues having to deal with apparent racism linked to skin tone origin and hair superiority within the African American community....