No, Sparky!: February 2009

OPEN LETTER TO SPIKE LEE

Dear Mr. Lee,

I love your films. I even like the ones that no one has seen, like Mo' Better Blues and Miracle at St. Anna. I know people often accuse you of unfairly focusing on blacks, showing women in misogynist-fantasy situations, and accusing most white people about being racist, but I don't see any of that in your movies, really. I think you do as honest a job at portraying reality as you can, or at least to portraying your reality, which is the closest any of us will probably ever get to objectivity.

But I am not here to discuss social theory or race struggles. I am here to issue you a challenge.

It is a simple proposition: make a movie about white people. In fact, make a movie with no black people in it. No Asians either. Just whites, and maybe Mexicans. No one else. To make it even crazier, make sure half of the whites are Jews. (Inside man doesn't count, of course, despite the large number of whites and Jews, it wasn't really about white people; rather, it was about the audience solving the mystery, and also about confronting new racism, such as in the scene with the Sheik).

Why do I offer this challenge to you, you ask? Because I respect you as a filmmaker, and as an artist. I know that, as an artist, it's always important to challenge yourself and to move forward in creative ways. In this sense, it's important for you to do things that people don't expect out of you. You've already established yourself as one of cinema's greatest directors, and have helped to usher in a prolific, free age of black film making. People, and arguably society, have been changed by your films, challenged to confront themselves and their role in an American society that, by all accounts, has not transcended a long history of racism and discrimination.

Now that we've elected a black president, many say that racism is over, that we live in a post-race society. I would disagree, but I think that it is the first step in achieving an overall cultural ability to shed our history of discrimination. Perhaps the most important place this needs to be reflected in is in the arts. If people can see you, the most prominent, innovative, and outspoken black filmmaker in history, create a movie so out of your vein, so beyond what they expect, simply through your choice to create a story about white people, then the erosion of race will have started for certain. If you stop confronting the problems of racism, if you show that your filmmaking skills do not need to be harnessed to this end any longer, that you have achieved what you set out to achieve, then it will show the nation that we are on our way to a new world of peace and understanding once and for all.

You will probably never read this, or if you do, I assume you won't take my advice very seriously. However, if you'd ever like to sit down and discuss it, I shouldn't be too hard to find (I go to the school you teach at).

Also, I'd just like to compliment you on Malcolm X, your masterpiece, and on When the Levees Broke. Also, your promotion of Terrence Blanchard's masterful music is incredible and totally laudable. I know that, either way, you'll do the right thing.

Peace and love,

Sparky