Movie Soundtrack
Every time I watch Spike Lee's movie, I feel very heavy. This should be why I have marked many of his movies as "want to watch", but every time I have to spend a lot of courage, time and mood are ready, ask myself "then watch one", and then open it to watch One. Every time a Spike Lee Joint appears on the screen (and other directors basically use the word Film), I can feel the corners of my mouth raise slightly, and then squeeze, "huh", the ghost is here!
These are the Spike Lee Joint I have seen:
Malcolm X
25th hour
Mo' Better Blues
Inside Man
Mike Tyson
Summer of Sam
(The reason why I didn’t watch the jungle fever is because any art form with more than 50% of the theme of love is impatient to appreciate due to the expectation of originality and direct experience)
As far as the ones I've seen so far (the number is simply too small), including do the right thing, almost all of them are related to race except for inside man. 25th hour is between yes and no, because Monty’s Irish identity is hard to be ignored like “German, Dutch” and other ethnic groups. The Summer of Sam more clearly used the identity and social status of the Irish people to build the story on this background.
It can be seen that Spike Lee considers the dimension of race very important. Without race as a background, it seems that for him, the narrative of the movie is too thin. What's more, his movie gives me a feeling that if the film is two hours long, the first 100 minutes will be trivial foreshadowing. Many people may see that 20 minutes, 50 minutes, or even 89 minutes, they want to give up because they don't understand or can't grasp the main line. However, if once the foreboding period is passed, perhaps at the 101st minute, the climax is reached, then all the seemingly trivial content before will be pieced together and smashed at you, making you completely unable to resist, unable to resist, tear ducts Collapse, the inner line of defense also collapsed.
But the strange thing is that the variable race plays a contradictory role in do the right thing. I mean, when Spike Lee discusses race and his own race in this movie, his objective, calm, and hierarchical nature tells us that it is a foolish thing to classify people by race too simply. . The so-called stupidity here, Spike means "intensifying contradictions."
We continue. The whole movie contains the following categories of people:
1. Italians who completely despise blacks——Sal’s eldest son Absolute status is too low)
2. A more moderate Italian——Sal, at least in the business level "seeking" black customers, so I don't want to have any conflict with black people, even though he still sticks to his Italian identity
3. An Italian who can blend in with blacks ------ Sal's youngest son, has a very good relationship with Mookie
4. Negroes who look down on Italians ------that buddy who asks to show black photos, smiley, radio can also be counted
5. More moderate blacks-------Mookie, there are a few young people in a group who say they eat pizza from their home
6. The black man who has kept his cool head--------da mayor
7. Korean
Among these 7 types of people, they promoted the development of the story, gradually screwed together the trivial story fragments, and continued to deepen the contradiction. In fact, there are only two types of people--------moderates 2 and 5, because of the others. Their position has remained almost the same from beginning to end, so their behavior and conflicts with others are at best an objective condition for the development of the story, not the point of view of the story.
The highlight may be at the beginning. Smiley took the photos of the two big Ms and said, ah, we blacks have no leaders, but this is just to explain the background of the story; the highlight may be the black photos and the quarrel between the buddies and Sal, which made the entire restaurant. It’s not quiet. He also said that in fact their favorite stars in Italy are all blacks, and even asked Mookie to stand up and make peace, but this is just to pave the way for the plot, because for blacks who look down on Italians, this kind of I look down upon it sooner or later; the point may be that Sal drove his car through the black young people playing with water, and then these bad boys poured water into Sal’s car-this is actually one of the highlights, because Sal His attitude gradually changed.
An important plot that gradually came to a climax was that Sal killed the radio's radio. The reason is that Sal thinks singing is noisy, and this also constitutes a reason for radio's provocation. Then the radio and the photo buddy started fighting with Sal and his family. Then the black teenagers who were originally moderate in the shop quit, and everyone fought together. Then the police came, and then the (black) police killed a black man.
However, I think the climax of the whole movie is that Mookie ran to the trash can and took a metal object, and then started his extremely bad behavior of smashing and looting his employer's property, because this not only triggered the subsequent arson. What's even more annoying is that beating, smashing and looting is simply a white-eyed wolf behavior, because Sal said before that this pizza restaurant has a copy of Mookie, and he doesn't treat Mookie as an outsider at all.
Why did things like "turn off the sound of the tape recorder" gradually evolved into a violent conflict that was unnecessary and without warning? Spike Lee's explanation is because the attitude of the moderates has changed. Among these seven types of people, those who originally belonged to the moderates have changed their view of friend and friend, because they added the criterion of "race" to the process of judging the relationship between friend and friend. Once we racialize ourselves and others, we will lose our minds, forget the contact and interaction of equal identities in daily life, will produce unconditional love, and then tolerate or even pass on unconditional hatred. Let alone South Koreans, in order to avoid being implicated, they say that they are black and are completely speculators. However, Spike Lee introduced a third race here. Indeed, since the beginning of the Civil War, American society has not been a race relationship between black and white. It has also increased the complexity of the story and is more in line with reality.
The ending of the film quoted the words of the two big Ms, which echoed the behavior of Smiley's "sermon" in front of the church at the beginning. The two big Ms are the two opposing black thoughts during the Civil Rights Movement. Of course, the two are just political disagreements, not enemies. I even think that they are the inheritance and development of booker washington and web dubois respectively. In these two quotations, the focus of contention is violence. If you want to gain power, you should use violence. The main theme song of the whole movie is "fight the power". At the beginning of the movie, it is also the song of border defense. The lyrics are almost like this, accompanied by a boxing scene of a woman.
But is the movie really about violence itself? perhaps. Spike Lee definitely wants to say that violence cannot solve all problems, it can only make our lives worse. For example, there is no place where we can eat pizza. For example, Sal is not calm, and the foundation he has built by himself is gone. Etc., etc. But (appealing to) violence is only a result. What is the reason? What caused the violence?
It should not simply divide people into you and me based on their race. That is, it should not be racialized.
If you can't do this, then don't be the swaying moderate.
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