Sex and America’s founding truths
My subject today is Spike Lee, the man who sounds like an adverb. If you’re surprised that I’m writing about him, join the club, because I know next to nothing about him. I don’t know what he looks like, or if Spike’s his real name.
I do know he’s a film director but I’ve seen none of his films. He should not take that personally. I had a brief burst of enthusiasm for the motion picture industry when I was about 8, during which time I saw Where Eagles Dare twice at the local cinema. Then the cinema burned down. Whether it was arson or accident I didn’t know but it was by far the best day of my life up till then, and I can think of few better since.
From the other side of Keymer Rd we watched the flames erupt through the roof. Then the facade of the building collapsed to reveal the raked seats inside, including the one I’d sat in to watch the eagles daring. Those seats were so thoroughly on fire that they pulsed orange-golden and were somehow transparent, like ghosts of themselves. I woke next morning to a world without a cinema and I have stayed there since.
The Spike Lee films I haven’t seen are apparently about the experience of being black in the United States. Now, I once spent a couple of days in a small town in central Florida, so I am something of an expert on being black in the United States. And my conclusion is that it isn’t always a stroll through the daisied fields of joyful ease and nonchalance. I gather Mr Lee’s conclusion is similar.
The reason isn’t far to seek.
There are two founding truths to the United States that have simply never gone away. The first is that the place was colonised in the early 17th century by puritan religious zealots; the second, that it imported a large number of Africans against their will to act as slaves. (Quaintly, the puritans liked to have their slaves baptised in Africa, prior to chaining them in the holds and shipping them across the Atlantic.)
The legal and social conditions of the USA have changed beyond recognition in the last 400 years, but for a substantial part of the country the mind-set hasn’t. So when you hear President Obama disparaged as a Muslim born in Kenya, that’s the 17th century speaking. And the same prejudice duly played out in the recent election.
The Republican Party has a long history of doing everything possible to stop black people voting, and Trump’s lackeys are in court even as I type trying to discount the votes that they did manage to cast.
It’s just the American way. You could understand if Spike Lee were discouraged.
And now it seems that he may be. From a news bulletin on the radio last week I learned that his next project is quite different. He’s going to direct a musical about – and I am not making this up – Viagra.
So there you have it. Spike Lee has spent his professional life making movies about the hardships of being black in the USA, but however worthy those movies have been, however well made or well observed, however searingly true, however savage their indictment of injustice, they’ve brought about little if any change in his home country, and aroused little interest down here in the South Pacific.
The moment, however, he forsakes all that for a project with the thrilling whiff of sex, he’s straight into the headlines. It’s a wonderful world.