Posted on 10/04/2002 11:45:48 AM PDT by Tancred
To Spike Lee, real power comes not from the barrel of a gun, but the lens of a camera.
The acclaimed Brooklyn-based director of such movies as ''She's Gotta Have It,'' ''Do the Right Thing'' and ''Malcolm X'' returned to this theme often during his visit Tuesday to East Stroudsburg University.
During an evening address to roughly 1,000 people at the Abeloff Convocation Center, Lee, 46, explained that while any country's military might can subjugate, the ability to ''dominate, shape and twist the way people think through culture -- music, movies, clothes, Coca-Cola and McDonald's'' -- is the true source of America's power.
And, Lee stressed, with such power comes both great responsibility and perhaps unintended consequences. For example, he recounted his reaction watching the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on television.
''After the second plane hit I thought, 'This is a disaster movie come to life,''' Lee said. ''And this is not to say I'm blaming Mr. Bruckheimer, who has movies like 'Armageddon' and 'Pearl Harbor,' but I found it hard not to believe that the persons who planned it hadn't spent their lives watching those kinds of films.''
In an afternoon question-and-answer session with about 300 high school and college students, Lee also weighed in on the controversy surrounding ''Barbershop,'' even though he has yet to see the hit slice-of-life comedy starring Ice Cube, Anthony Anderson, Cedric the Entertainer and Eve.
Lee said he disagrees with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton's call for a boycott because of remarks about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. But he would not have included jokes calling King ''a 'ho'' and saying Parks did nothing but sit down, even if, as in ''Barbershop,'' they are said by a slightly loopy character and derided by those who hear them. ''It demonstrates a lack of vision, respect and history --and it's not funny,'' Lee said.
During his evening address, ''America Through My Lens,'' Lee decried Hollywood's unwillingness to make so-called films with predominantly black actors that fall outside of three ''ghettos'': the low-brow comedy, the romantic comedy, and the shoot-'em-up, hip-hop gangster film. ''TV is even harder,'' he added. Programs with a black cast ''always have to be some idiotic sitcom.''
But even when blacks are given prominent roles in mainstream films, there are pitfalls, Lee noted. He singled out the Depression-era fantasy/drama ''The Green Mile,'' where Michael Duncan Clarke plays a ''supernatural Negro'' convict with mystical healing powers, and ''The Legend of Bagger Vance,'' a period sports drama in which Will Smith portrays a mysterious gentleman who helps struggling golf pro Matt Damon regain his swing by becoming his caddy. Neither man ''is able to use those powers on himself to better his situation, only the white leading man,'' Lee pointed out.
''The Patriot,'' a Revolutionary War drama put together by the director/producer team responsible for such sci-fi blockbusters as ''Independence Day'' and ''Godzilla,'' also was a source of irritation. ''Mel Gibson is shown sitting on his porch, with all these black people … It's never mentioned, is he paying those people, or is he a slave owner?'' Lee asked with exasperation, as the crowd laughed. ''And not one Native American in the film?''
Lee concluded his evening address with observations about the current political climate. ''Maybe soon we'll be at war with the new bogeyman,'' Lee said. ''After Sept. 11, it was 'Kill bin Laden,' but now, since we couldn't find him, it's the three-card monte, the old bait-and-switch.''
''Another reason why we're doing this Iraq thing,'' he added, is the weak economy, where corporate criminals ''get hundreds of millions'' and small investors who trusted their retirement money to them ''must go back to work.'' He urged the crowd to see ''Wag the Dog''' the 1997 political/media satire in which a beleaguered president cooks up a fake war to distract the electorate from domestic problems.
In the afternoon session, Lee bristled when asked for his reaction to a People magazine story that claimed John Walker Lindh, aka ''the American Taliban,'' was inspired to convert to Islam by Lee's 1992 masterpiece, ''Malcolm X.''
''He saw it when he was 12,'' Lee said. ''There was no Taliban then, only Islam. Not all followers of Islam are terrorists. … That question is not only asinine but idiotic.''
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Um, I don't seem to remember him making the case against the timing of Clinton's bombings doing just that!
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