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com
The Spike Lee Brand

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 SUNY series in African American Studies
—————
John R. Howard and Robert C. Smith, editors

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 The Spike Lee Brand
A Study of Documentary Filmmaking

Delphine Letort

Foreword by

Mark A. Reid

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Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2015 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

www.sunypress.edu

Production, Jenn Bennett

Marketing, Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Letort, Delphine.
The Spike Lee brand : a study of documentary filmmaking / Delphine Letort ;
foreword by Mark A. Reid.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in African American studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5763-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5764-2 (e-book)
1. Lee, Spike—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Documentary films. I. Title.

PN1998.3.L44L48 2015
791.4302'33092—dc23 2014038928

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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 I wish to dedicate this work to Ludovic and Joséphine
and thank them for their patience and everyday support.

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 Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Foreword: Agency as Remembering and Retelling xi

Mark A. Reid

Acknowledgments xiii

List of Abbreviations xv

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints 9

Chapter 2 History and Memory: The African American

Experience 37

Chapter 3 Media and Race 63

Chapter 4 The Legacy of Black Nationalism: Culture and Politics 103

Conclusion 149

Notes 155

Bibliography 189

Index 205

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 List of Illustrations

Figure 1.1 When the Levees Broke. Courtesy of Photofest 26

Figure 2.1 Four Little Girls. Courtesy of Photofest 41
Figure 3.1 Jim Brown: All American. Courtesy of Photofest 83
Figure 3.2 A Huey P. Newton Story. Courtesy of Photofest 98
Figure 4.1 When the Levees Broke. Courtesy of Photofest 108

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 FOREWORD

Agency as Remembering and Retelling

Mark A. Reid*

The potential that concerns me is that of black filmmaking in this

country. By raising funds himself, using blacks in most of the creative
positions, and—to the shock of the cynical and jaded—making mon-
ey, Spike has thrown down the gauntlet at those black filmmakers
awaiting the blessings of cinema’s “great white fathers.”
—Nelson George, The Foreword to He’s Gotta Have It 1

Most book-length works, book chapters, and academic and film articles
that discuss the work of Spike Lee do not cover his documentaries; and
when they do, the article narrowly focuses on a single nonfiction film. I
admit that I have done this in all my writing on one of America’s most
important filmmakers. Therefore, when I was given an opportunity to
review a manuscript about Lee’s documentary work I welcomed the chal-
lenge and found that Lee’s talent in telling human stories covers many
waterfronts of blackness with passionate visually sincere brushstrokes.
CNN reporter and talk show host Anderson Cooper considers Spike Lee
as a major figure in contemporary black American cultural politics. This is
evidenced in Anderson Cooper’s 360° interviews with Lee on such issues as
Donald Sterling’s (former owner of the Los Angeles Spurs basketball team)
recorded racist diatribe, the gentrification of New York City’s historically

*Mark A. Reid is Professor of English at the University of Florida. He is the author of

Redefining Black Film (U. of California Press, 1993), PostNegritude Visual and Literary
Culture (SUNY Press, 1997), and Black Lenses, Black Voices: African American Film
Now (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

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xii / Foreword

black communities, and the use of the “N” word in Quentin Tarrantino’s
Django Unchained.
Lee is a late-comer to documentary filmmaking and there exist
many highly respected African-American documentarians like Madeline
Anderson, Carol Parrott Blue, Stanley Nelson, Michelle Parkerson, Marlon
Riggs, Jacqueline Shearer, Yvonne Welbon, and others who paved the way
for Spike Lee. Unlike these filmmakers, Lee’s entry into nonfiction film
comes after a long and critically successful career in writing, producing,
and making fiction films. For this reason, a volume on his social docu-
mentaries merits our attention.
The Spike Lee Brand makes a very important contribution to scholar-
ly studies of the film-work of Spike Lee by looking at his documentaries.
The author’s coverage intelligently places Lee in the pantheon of important
social political documentarians such as Claude Lanzmann and Emile de
Antonio. The volume is probably the first single-authored work that I am
aware of that covers Spike Lee’s documentaries. It is a finely written piece
that should have already been published here in the USA.
The volume is well organized in sections that explain Lee’s overall
film-works before it examines his documentaries. Delphine Letort’s cov-
erage of Lee’s work is prefaced with comments on his narrative films,
which then are distinguished from the style of his documentaries. She
analyzes the different distinguishing elements between Lee’s fiction and
nonfiction films, while she insists on the similar political qualities that
prevail regardless of the two different genres.
Letort’s balanced appraisal of Lee’s nonfiction films is complemented
with discussions about how Lee’s documentaries address issues that con-
cern racism in urban America. The Spike Lee Brand indicates how Lee’s
documentaries show black agency through the community’s collective
actions that demand legal and judicial changes. Each chapter indirectly
provides reasons why cultural anthropologists, public policymakers, film
scholars, and audiences should invest more attention to Spike Lee’s social
documentaries and the recorded voices of those who bear witness to their
predicament.

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 Acknowledgments

I started researching and writing this book after watching Spike Lee’s
documentaries about Hurricane Katrina, which provided insight into the
images of distress that had flooded the screens of French television. My
study gradually expanded into a full-length book after working on Four
Little Girls and A Huey P. Newton Story, which I discovered challenged
the historical narrative of the Civil Rights movement as I was teaching
it in my civilization courses. Not only do these films investigate the past
in an attempt to reveal untold truths, thus placing Spike Lee among such
innovative documentary filmmakers as Emile de Antonio and Errol Mor-
ris, but they also convey an African-American perspective which I have
endeavored to present to my students. Spike Lee’s documentaries have pro-
vided useful teaching material, allowing students to further their historical
understanding of the periods presented in the films. I wish to thank my
students for their enthusiastic responses to the images we screened and
commented together, which provided the initial incentive to this project.
I am grateful to my dear colleagues and friends Eliane Elmaleh and
Brigitte Felix, who have both been a source of inspiration and unflinching
support through the years we have been working together at the Univer-
sity of Maine (Le Mans, France). Through discussion and debate they
have helped me gain confidence in various research projects—including
this book of which they heard the first words. My thanks also go to John
Wilde who has been a very careful reader to most of the pages that fol-
low. His comments helped improve the quality of my writing and I truly
appreciate his insight and many suggestions.
My home university granted me a six-month sabbatical leave,
allowing me to pursue the research necessary for the completion of this
book. I wish to express my gratitude to this institution as well as to my
research lab (3L.AM—Langues, Littératures, Linguistique de l’Université
d’Angers et du Maine) and its directors Nathalie Prince, Franck Laurent,

xiii

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xiv / Acknowledgments

and Benaouda Lebdai. I have collaborated with my colleagues at the

Department of English on various projects or courses, which have helped
broaden my knowledge in different fields of study. I want to acknowl-
edge their support through this friendly note: Redouane Aboueddahab,
Alban Daumas, Laïli Dor, William Gleeson, Laurence Guillois-Becel,
Jeffrey Hopes, Xavier Lachazette, Elisabeth Lamothe, Hélène Lecossois,
Laurence Mauger, Brigitte Moriceau, Estelle Rivier, Anne-Marie Santin-
Guettier, and Richard Tholoniat.
I extend my gratitude to Nicole Vigouroux-Frey who trusted me a
few years ago when I timidly started researching films, following an intu-
ition that she helped sharpen by her insightful questions and suggestions.
She has offered her continuous support over the years and I thank her
for her friendship, her intellectual rigor, and her pragmatic advice. I also
had the chance to attend Jean Rasenberger’s film lectures when I was a
student at Occidental College; she offered the greatest thought-provoking
courses I ever had in film studies, challenging the students into watching
art films that I would never have discovered without her guidance.
A great deal of gratitude goes to colleagues who have guided my
research in the past few years and furthered my understanding of films—
including Hélène Charlery, Serge Chauvin, Nicole Cloarec, Emmanuelle
Delanoë-Brun, Renée Dickason, Georges Fournier, Georges-Claude Guil-
bert, Janice D. Hamlet, Anthony T. Larson, Isabelle Le Corff, Gilles Men-
egado, Monica Michlin, Mark A. Reid, David Roche, Dominique Sipière,
Penny Starfield, Taïna Tuhkunen, and Shannon Wells-Lassagne.
Last but not least, I’m exceedingly grateful to Professor Michael T.
Martin who has provided me with consistent support for the past couple
of years—responding enthusiastically to all my questions and emails. His
informative criticism has guided my research efforts, bringing this work
into sharper focus. He suggested new paths of study which have enriched
my approach to black film studies. He invited me to serve on the advisory
editorial board of Black Camera (Indiana University Press), which has
been an exciting adventure that has broadened my perspectives on black
filmmaking and stimulated new avenues of research.
I also owe a great debt to the anonymous peer reviewers whose
stimulating, insightful remarks helped me reshuffle the text into a pub-
lishable piece.

Support for this publication was provided by:

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 List of Abbreviations

IGIW If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise

WTLB When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
ABC American Broadcast Company
BBC British Broadcasting Company
CNN Cable News Network
ESPN Entertainment and Sports Programming Network
HBO Home Box Office
BP British Petroleum
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency
HANO Housing Authority of New Orleans
HUD Department of Housing and Urban Development
MMS Minerals Management Service
PBS Public Broadcasting Company

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 Introduction

Spike Lee’s artistic engagement with racial politics can be traced through-
out his film career, which is marred by repeated controversies drawing
attention to his persona as a public figure whose outspoken views con-
sistently challenge the myth of the United States as a color-blind society.
His fiction films earned him recognition as a committed filmmaker, both
disrupting and reviving racial stereotypes while challenging dominant
modes of representation in popular culture. While this book is primarily
concerned with his work as a documentarian, it is useful to note that the
“Spike Lee Brand” encapsulates a filmmaking style and a racial perspective
that are disseminated in all of his film productions—whether fiction or
nonfiction. Spike Lee expresses his political views through recounting
fictional situations that are often based on real stories, prompting heated
debates on issues of race, class, and gender that are often eschewed by
the mainstream media. Be they box-office hits or financial failures, Hol-
lywood big-budget productions or cheap digital films,1 Lee’s feature films
and documentary projects further reflection on those racial matters that
provide the focus of his narratives, interrogating the legacies of Jim Crow
over the present.
She’s Gotta Have it (1986) daringly foregrounds the representation
of black female sexuality on screen; School Daze (1988) tackles intraracial
class and color prejudice; Do the Right Thing (1989) questions the inter-
twined notions of race and class in a multicultural ghetto; Mo’ Better Blues
(1990) romanticizes jazz culture; Jungle Fever deals with interracial sex
(1991); Malcolm X (1992) relates the personal and political path of iconic
black nationalist Malcolm X; Clockers (1995) delves into the drug and
crime business that thrives in the urban ghettoes; He Got Game (1998)
interrogates the relation between basketball and business; Bamboozled
(2000) explores the construction of racial stereotypes on screen; She Hate

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2 / The Spike Lee Brand

Me (2004) represents homoerotic desire; and Miracle at St. Anna (2008)

pinpoints the active role of black soldiers during the Second World War.
While these feature films established the cinematographic rules that
became idiosyncratic style in his fiction and nonfiction endeavors, they
also demonstrate Lee’s consistent interest in factual history, which may
account for the reason why he turned to documentary filmmaking and
continues to devote much time and energy to such ventures. The filmmak-
er’s commitment to the documentary is rarely discussed in the abundant
critical literature devoted to his filmic output, which prioritizes the study
of his fiction drama and his treatment of taboo subjects—including mis-
cegenation, black sexuality, minstrelsy, etc. Each newly released feature
unavoidably stirs up controversy, prompting the opinionated filmmak-
er to take advantage of every public opportunity to vent his views and
engage discussions about the issues that confront African Americans in
their everyday life. His controversial statements tend to overshadow his
documentary production, which however offers a unique perspective on
the effects of race and class in American society.
Ranging from history to sports and music, his documentaries tackle
a diversity of topics in an attempt to challenge racial stereotypes and
prejudices, furthering the “struggles for representation” that characterize
the tradition of African-American documentary. Film scholars Phyllis R.
Klotman and Janet K. Cutler argue that the documentary genre has pro-
vided African-American filmmakers a tool with which “to interrogate
and reinvent history” allowing them “to assert their view of reality.”2 Lee
follows in the wake of African-American documentarians who responded
to a struggle to be seen and used nonfiction as a means of cultural and
political expression, retrieving historical episodes and African-American
figures from collective oblivion. His concern for the life of African Amer-
icans in the face of Jim Crow’s enduring legacies makes him a black doc-
umentarian broaching themes that would remain repressed if not tackled
by black minority directors—including William Miles, St Clair Bourne,
Madeline Anderson, and Marlon T. Riggs, among others.3 His filmed biog-
raphies resonate with a tradition dedicated to telling the fights of black
leaders, whose historical input would never make it to the mainstream
without the commitment of such filmmakers as William Greaves, Stanley
Nelson, and others. Based on investigations into the lives of iconic figures
like football player Jim Brown, singer Michael Jackson, basketball star
Kobe Bryant, his documentaries bring to light personal experiences that
serve to illustrate different aspects of the black experience.
From unearthing the history of civil rights to retracing the careers
of sports icons, from documenting New Orleans’s reconstruction after

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 Introduction / 3

Katrina to retelling the story of Michael Jackson’s work ethics behind a

glowing career, Lee’s documentary filmmaking challenges the stereotypi-
cal representations of African Americans across the television spectrum
while offering didactic tools to better comprehend the concrete impact of
the color line in American society. His films beg to question the politics
of representation behind highly mediatized topics, which are reductively
epitomized by individuals whom the mainstream media spotlight: Michael
Jackson embodies the 1980s’ music revolution; Michael Jordan symbolizes
the black athlete’s exceptional performances; O. J. Simpson represents the
archetypal black criminal; Martin Luther King stands for the whole Civil
Rights movement, etc. The director considers the power of iconic photo-
graphs to frame the viewers’ perceptions of events by remediating them
in a narrative that complexifies the stories behind them. His biographical
documentaries thus rely on a polyphony of voices that are edited in coun-
terpoint to each other in a narrative that questions the racial discourse
of the media.
The cable station Home Box Office (HBO) co-produced his first for-
ay into the genre (Four Little Girls, 1997), his first sport documentary (Jim
Brown: All American, 2002) and his two-part series about New Orleans
after Katrina (When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four, 2005; If God Is
Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, 2010) whereas Lee’s second documen-
tary A Huey P. Newton Story (2001) was the first original production of
BLACK STARZ! cable channel,4 Kobe Doin’ Work (2009) was produced
by the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) and Bad
25 was made in collaboration with the estates of Michael Jackson. Lee’s
documentaries exhibit the technical devices used in his fiction films, thus
guaranteeing the filmmaker leaves his easily identifiable imprint on them,
which may however undermine the credibility of his stance as a docu-
mentarian. “The documentary tradition relies heavily on being able to
convey an impression of authenticity” explains film theorist Bill Nichols,5
observing that documentary films are expected to produce a faithful rep-
resentation of the world. While this widely shared belief is derived from
the mimetic power of the camera, providing raw access to the world
it captures on-the-fly, Lee’s staunch stance on race-related issues none-
theless appears as a barrier to overcome should the audience believe in
the tight correspondence between the images he records and the reality
he portrays. Some commercial documentaries further prompt questions
as regards his engagement to retrieve an authentic understanding of the
situations he investigates. The financial contribution brought in by Sony
Music, which produced some of Michael Jackson’s musical videos, may
have weighed on the narrative choices undergirding the making of the

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biographical documentary Bad 25. Matt Singer reviews Bad 25 in the

light of Red Hook Summer (2012), which broaches the secret paedophilic
past of a community preacher, suggesting the filmmaker used the feature
film to address the controversies which he eschewed in his documentary
project about Michaeln Jackson.6
Lee’s appropriation of the documentary mode is not seen as artisti-
cally creative. In the latest scholarly book devoted to Spike Lee’s America,
film critic David Sterritt deems that the documentaries are illustrations
of Lee’s hectic filmic output and contends that their informative value
prevails overs their artistic quality. Summarizing in no more than a few
pages the eight-hour documentary series comprising When the Levees
Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) and its sequel If God Is Willing
and Da Creek Don’t Rise (2010), Sterritt observes that “neither film is
particularly distinctive or distinguished in artistic terms, but together
they comprise a work of humanistic cinema that is as laudable as it is
monumental.”7 The two four-hour-long films span a five-year period and
provide a sociological insight into post-Katrina New Orleans that makes
them unique experiments in the contemporary televisual landscape. They
also aptly illustrate Lee’s creative appropriation of the various documenta-
ry techniques, blending the observational and the poetic modes to convey
the emotional dimension of filming history in the making. Much atten-
tion will be devoted to the challenging viewing experience represented
by this pair of films, highlighting their values as sociological documents
and filmic endeavors.
This book aims to demonstrate that Lee’s documentaries are as
thought provoking as his most controversial feature films. Rather than
adopt a comparative approach that would measure up the documentaries
to their fictional counterparts, I intend to examine and critique the ide-
ological discourse of Lee’s documentaries through the narrative and aes-
thetic strategies they deploy. His nonfiction endeavors explore events that
transformed the relationship of African Americans to American society,
adopting a reflective stance that contributes to challenging assumptions
and altering perception which, according to Bill Nichols, characterizes the
Golden Age of documentaries that began in the 1980s and has continued
unabated since.8 Spike Lee’s documentaries give voice to African Ameri-
cans with a view to constructing a frame of understanding that challenges
and undermines racial bias, offering critical insight into a series of events
that expose the enduring weight of racial prejudice in American society
and in the media. In an interview given to Cineaste, Lee expands on the
political subtext of his intertextual filmmaking:

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 Introduction / 5

I want people to think about the power of images, not just

in terms of races, but how imagery is used and what sort of
social impact it has—how it influences how we talk, how we
think, how we view one another. In particular I want them to
see how films and television have historically, from the birth
of both mediums, produced and perpetuated images . . . and
a lot of that madness that is still with us today.9

This approach undergirds his documentary filmmaking, which questions

the media’s treatment of and interaction with race while pinpointing the
continuing effects of discrimination. Lee abundantly exploits the possibil-
ities offered by montage to fragment the past into multiple perspectives,
which confers an interesting polyphonic aspect to the films that incor-
porate a wide array of primary sources. His documentaries are built on a
compilation of documents, either archival photographs or personal items,
which reveal the existence of competing truths. Different layers of infor-
mation mingle: the witnesses’ personal accounts combine with archival
media footage, shifting the narrative from the past to the present, from
the personal to the political, from the intimate to the public. Thus the
multilevel narratives call attention to the director’s investigative research
work into the stories of the past. Lee revives the tradition of the griot as
he explores a range of storytelling techniques that exploit the African oral
tradition, opening up public screen space for African Americans to testify
about their lived experience of race.10 Even though his documentaries are
steeped in racial politics, they offer entertaining stories that widen their
appeal to a crossover audience, allowing memory to be shared beyond
the color line. This book aims to offer an in-depth study of Spike Lee’s
documentary filmmaking, highlighting their twofold value as documents
providing valuable sociological records and as texts illustrating the direc-
tor’s idiosyncratic worldview.
The first chapter discusses Spike Lee’s creative appropriation of the
documentary, striving to analyze the shift from the participatory to the
performative modes, which characterizes his approach to the genre. Lee
resorts to fictional techniques including music and editing to convey the
atmosphere embedded in archival footage, slowing down the television
flow to counter the audience’s viewing habits. The filmmaker induces
a contemplative gaze when introducing stills that seem to freeze filmic
movement and to suspend the time flow. Most talking head interviews
are filmed with a static camera, simulating a fixed gaze that enhances
the testimonial act. The combination of archival material and interviews

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6 / The Spike Lee Brand

with individuals whose confessed memories express alternative viewpoints

complexifies the narrative of the past and the viewers’ perception of it. Lee
relinquishes the observer’s position to engage with the events broached,
using a conspicuous handheld camera to express corporeal engagement
with the characters he accompanies. Rather than gather the materials
through observation, Lee interferes with the situations depicted, entering
the frame while standing among the filmed crowd or directly addressing
his interviewees. However, Lee would rather remain out of shot and avoid
representing his interaction with the people he films in the tradition of the
participatory documentary mode. His intervention resembles an invita-
tion for his interviewees to speak their minds freely, to revisit old stories,
and to share further their views. Looking straight at the camera, the filmed
characters self-consciously engage with the facts Spike Lee urges them to
address. French film theorist Jean-Louis Comolli dubs documentary par-
ticipants “characters” to enhance the fact that the camera captures their
own mise en scène and their relationship to their environment which he
compares to a social stage.11 Lee’s camera pays careful attention to details
that build characterization, prompting his interviewees to speak out and
to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the camera to address
a wider audience. The spoken words combine with Lee’s elusive authorial
presence, emphasizing the creative process of his documentary filmmak-
ing as a reflexive construction of representation. The interviews are staged
and the characters pose as themselves, undermining the illusion that the
documentary may capture truth without the mediation of the camera.
Conversely, the visibility of the recording apparatus promotes the film as
a self-reflexive construction and a carefully crafted representation.
The second chapter delves into the interplay between the visual rep-
resentation of history and the notion of oral memory, which Lee explores
when examining the legacy of the Civil Rights movement. Relying on
eyewitnesses’ testimonials to reconstruct the untold stories of the past, he
uses films as a didactic tool to transmit African-American history from
the viewpoint of its actors and to redress the distortions and fill in the
omissions of the dominant narrative. Lee offers his films as platforms to
his interviewees who share their memories of the past (Four Little Girls)
or voice their critical views of the present (If God Is Willing and Da
Creek Don’t Rise), thus taking part in the construction of collective mem-
ory around specific events. Historian Marc Ferro posits that the study of
the relation between history and memory on screen cannot be broached
without considering the economic and ideological values pervading the
business of filmmaking—which he refers to as the “nonvisible” or the

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 Introduction / 7

“extrafilmic.”12 The historian’s critical approach to films includes the eco-

nomic and intellectual context of production in so far at it affects the
construction of images and narrative structures. His methodology argues
for an interdisciplinary perspective that focuses on the images as signs
of an extradiegetic reality, opening up film studies to various disciplines:
“Consider images as such at the risk of using other forms of knowl-
edge to grasp them even better.”13 The interdisciplinary nature of film
studies undergirds the framework of this book, which aims to decipher
Spike Lee’s documentaries as original contributions to the understanding
of African-American cultural memories. It therefore foregrounds a mul-
timethodological approach, combining semiology and narratology with
history and ideology to better comprehend the films’ critical discourse,
simultaneously articulating an analytical perspective on Spike Lee’s inter-
pretation of the facts mentioned.
The third chapter examines the interwoven issues of media and
race, which Lee addresses through portraying historical events or cultur-
al icons, the perception of which has been shaped by the media—both
television and films. Communication Professors Mark P. Orbe and A. Eliz-
abeth Lyons emphasize the multidimensional nature of Lee’s work,14 which
mixes social and cultural criticism when laying bare the linguistic biases
strategically used by the mainstream media. Lee’s intertextual work aims
to debunk the visual stereotypes of African Americans reinforcing race
and class prejudices in the media. The study of his documentaries provides
a stimulating insight into the media politics of representation, for Lee is
able to pinpoint and counter the biases of television culture as he retraces
the story of the “four little girls” or the humanitarian consequences of
Hurricane Katrina. He exposes the injustices of the present and the past,
opening up television screen space to African Americans who are eager
to bear witness to history in front of the camera, fashioning narratives
that allow them to make sense of their life. His documentaries self-re-
flexively question the images they borrow from the television archives,
which have preserved the narrative of the past as captured by the media.
Through investigating the aural and visual footage of Hurricane Katrina’s
devastating blow on New Orleans (When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in
Four Acts and its sequel If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise), the
filmmaker examines the dynamics of race and class that underpins the
representation of African Americans in the media.
The fourth chapter discusses Spike Lee’s commitment to Black
Nationalism, which raises issues of ethics considering the controversial
positions the director has assumed throughout his film career. Spike Lee’s

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8 / The Spike Lee Brand

commercial engagements clash with his activist endeavors, undermining

the credibility of his commitment to the ethics of documentary filmmak-
ing. The biased views associated with the controversies sparked by the
filmmaker undermine the search for truth which the genre signifies in
popular imagination. The director’s nonfiction endeavors not only encom-
pass documentaries, but they also comprise promotional videos and com-
mercial ads that pinpoint political inconsistencies that arouse doubts as to
the ethics of blackness he seems to endorse. Some of his advertising films
have even contributed to producing stereotypes—including his promo-
tional campaigns for Nike. The cultural icons Lee celebrates (Jim Brown,
Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson) embody successful Afri-
can Americans, who have managed to overcome the double prejudice of
race and class, while simultaneously contributing to the commodifica-
tion of African-American cultural production.15 The “Spike Lee” label has
become a trademark that not only connotes the director’s commitment
to relating stories from the perspective of African Americans, but it also
signifies the marketing strategies endorsed by the filmmaker to pursue a
career in the mainstream.

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 CHAPTER 1

The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints

Drawing on film theorist Bill Nichols’s groundbreaking study of the doc-

umentary, which he divides into six modes (poetic, expository, obser-
vational, participatory, reflexive, performative), this chapter reviews
Spike Lee’s television nonfiction filmmaking practices. Rather than lay
the emphasis on the documentary’s claim to authenticity, based on the
supposedly mimetic power of the camera to capture truth without inter-
ference, Nichols’s reflection builds on John Grierson’s 1926 definition of
the documentary as a genre that puts forward the “creative treatment of
actuality,”1 evoking the seemingly endless creative possibilities incipient in
the relationship between the camera and its subject(s). Nichols pinpoints
that filmmakers constantly modify the conventions of the documentary by
exploring the interstices between creative vision and factual reproduction
with a view to expressing their own perspectives and opinions. “Docu-
mentary engages with the world by representing it”2 contends Nichols,
questioning the ethical position of the filmmaker who produces a specific
discourse on the world represented—oscillating between persuasion (“I
speak about them to you”) and expression (“I speak about us to you”).3
This tension between two viewpoints permeates Spike Lee’s documen-
taries, revealing the degree of intimacy he develops with his subjects
and his authorial presence behind the camera. Although Lee does not
put forward his body on screen, rarely intruding in the frame, the films
nonetheless bear the imprint of his authorial signature. His idiosyncratic
voice determines the overall message endorsed by the films, whose strong
informative value yet resides in the testimonials of individual subjects
invited to tell their own stories in front of the camera. Documentary
filmmakers are keen to express their unique view of things, spotlighting
their own experiences (in the autobiographic mode) or their interlocutors’
to confront commonly held assumptions. Nichols explains that their films
should be analyzed as discourses: “What makes it a documentary is that

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this expressiveness remains coupled to representations about the social,

historical world, including the world of the filmmaker as a social actor,
going about his life or her life among others.”4
This chapter discusses the director’s creative appropriation of the
documentary modes, which he explores to interrogate the values and the
structures behind the media portrayal of African Americans. Through
pulling together fictional and nonfictional devices, Lee prompts the view-
er to take a critical stance at the representation of African-Americans’
experiences in the media and to recognize positive role models among
ordinary characters fighting for their civil rights. Lee calls attention to
ordinary citizens’ bravery when suggesting that the struggle of the 1960s
continues in post-Katrina New Orleans; he strives to overturn the nega-
tive stereotypes foisted on nationalist figures like Huey P. Newton, whose
political message of rebellion he endeavors to retrieve from the contro-
versies surrounding the Black Panthers’ history. Based on the narrative
arc fashioned by the stories of individuals whose names have become
renowned (or not) in relation to their deeds, Lee’s documentaries exploit
the biographical focus that personalizes his approach to the social and
historical topics he investigates. The emotional dimension of the endeav-
or challenges the detached and distanced glance which may be expect-
ed from a documentary; however, it promotes debate over racial issues
and translates the filmmaker’s commitment to fighting prejudice through
analyzing concrete examples. Delving into the personal experiences of
African-American characters, Lee aims to assess the weight of history
and politics on their everyday life, thereby producing an inside view of
racism which he is able to perceive through their eyes. A political agenda
undergirds Lee’s nonfiction filmmaking, geared toward rejuvenating the
image of African Americans, whose active historical and social role he
wishes to underline.
Rather than adopt the expository mode of documentary filmmak-
ing, which puts forth the indexical quality of the recorded footage and
the truth value of the verbal commentary helping shape a logical argu-
ment, Lee’s documentaries are reflexive tools insofar as they question the
informative value of the archival records which compose his film mate-
rials. Significantly, Lee unveils the filmic apparatus during his interviews,
revealing their staged dimension for example, which may be read as a sign
of his desire to lay bare the technical aspects of the film’s construction in
an attempt to convey authenticity. From the credit montage he develops
to introduce the viewers into a complex situation, which was simplified
into a few iconic shots and catchphrases in the media, to the narrative

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 11

construction of the documentary as a television series that investigates

the long-term consequences of Katrina, Lee leaves his creative imprint on
the genre’s flexible formula.

Investigating the Facts through the Camera Lens

Spike Lee’s fiction and nonfiction filmmaking practices feed off each oth-
er: his feature films include multiple references to extradiegetic reality
whereas his nonfiction films exhibit fictional devices that dramatize the
documentaries’ search for truth. Based in the Brooklyn neighborhood
of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Do the Right Thing dramatizes the daily misde-
meanors which press on individual interrelationships in a multicultural
environment. Giving rise to an array of stimulating comments, the film
influenced and shaped the popular perception of Lee’s cultural politics.
Political scientist Catherine Pouzoulet evokes the creative tension between
fact and fiction that permeates the diegetic space of Do the Right Thing.
She draws a list of all the news items that transpire into the fictional
representation of New York, highlighting plotlines and tropes that reso-
nate with notorious cases of racist violence.5 The film’s narrative builds
on explicit references to “incidents of interethnic violence, such as the
killing of Michael Griffith, who, as he was leaving a pizzeria in the pre-
dominantly white Howard Beach section of Queens, was fatally beaten by
Italian-American youths armed with baseball bats.”6 Lee’s storylines unfold
against a historical-factual background and allude to real-life events, the
individual and community impact of which he explores through emplot-
ment. Fact and fiction characteristically interweave in Lee’s filmmaking,
allowing crossovers that challenge generic conventions and audience
expectations. The warm yellowish tones of the image track in Do the Right
Thing signify the pull of fiction, which undermines a realistic depiction
of the ghetto’s societal ills.7
The credits of Malcolm X cut from a burning American flag to
video footage showing the police beating of Rodney King, whereas the
opening sequence of Clockers includes staged autopsy and crime-scene
photographs in a drug-plagued city.8 School Daze opens with a montage
of photographs portraying African-American athletes Jackie Robinson,
Willie Mays, and Muhammad Ali, thus evoking sports as a cultural back-
ground shared by the characters and the viewers. These glimpses of an
outside reality are presented as the basis for the dramatic situations pre-
sented, suggesting that the fictional characters are enmeshed in plots that

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are drawn from the commonplace world of everyday experience. Factual

and fictional elements are tightly intertwined in Spike Lee’s filmmaking
following an editing technique which is epitomized in the title sequence of
the previously mentioned films. Interestingly, he adopts a similar strategy
to introduce the thematic concerns that are developed in such documen-
taries as Four Little Girls and A Huey P. Newton Story, ambiguously resort-
ing to fictional devices to engage us with the facts mentioned—including
music, editing, and characterization, among others. His documentaries
make use of musical scores and carefully stylized filmmaking that affect
the meaning of the film.
Four Little Girls examines the psychological impact on both individ-
ual and community levels of the terrorist murders of fourteen-year-old
Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, and eleven-year-
old Denise McNair, killed by a blast while preparing for a special youth
service at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
The title of the film echoes the label coined by the media which drama-
tized the fate of the victims into a news flash story: the girls’ lives were
ended by the explosion of the bomb, which had been planted in the
basement of the church and went off during Sunday School service on
September 15, 1963. The documentary’s explanatory approach to segre-
gation provides valuable insight into the power dynamics of the period,
whilst its heterogeneous visual style questions the oral and visual dis-
course commodifying the memory of the victims.
The opening sequence of Four Little Girls interestingly presents the
film as a fictional biopic as the voice of Joan Baez sings “Birmingham
Sunday” while the camera tracks along a cemetery, capturing through a
blue filter tear-blurred images of the graves that dot the landscape. The
sequence shifts back and forth between the present and the past, stitching
together black and white archival footage of the 1960s’ police repression
and protests for equality with colored shots of the tombstones. Editing
dramatizes the introduction of the four teenagers’ photographic portraits
resting in the cemetery where they were buried. The entwined visual
tracks oppose the peace and quiet of the cemetery where the youngsters
now lay to the archival photographs of children proudly marching the
streets. The camera zooms in on the boys’ and girls’ determined, smiling
faces standing out in the crowd of demonstrators, thus spotlighting the
children’s political awareness and commitment. The credits capture the
imaginary imprint left by the struggle in a few shots that slowly morph
into an animated drawing, depicting three figures holding hands in a
chain of solidarity, symbolically linking the present and the past. The

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abstract images foster poetic contemplation as the voice of Joan Baez tran-
scends yesterday’s violence to enshroud the deceased girls with motherly
tenderness. The singer recounts the events of that fateful day in a lullaby
song, numbering the dead as though she was teaching counting rhymes.
Her soft soprano voice creates an intimate proximity with the dead, setting
the emotional tone that pervades the film.
Four Little Girls sacrifices the expository mode drawn from the
indexical quality of the photographs included in the montage for the poet-
ic affect achieved by the haunting, ghostly quality of the blurry blue-tinted
cemetery footage. Nichols argues that “this mode stresses mood, tone, and
effect much more than displays of factual knowledge or acts of rhetorical
persuasion.”9 The film, although undergirded by an expository purpose
and dedicated to the memory of the “four little girls,” combines infor-
mational and entertaining elements without giving in to sensationalism.
While the poetic mode indicates the director’s authorial presence, it also
metaphorically introduces the film as a remembrance tool and a tribute.
The tragedy of the “four little girls” is told from a subjective standpoint,
marked by an affective relationship to the past which Lee does not try
to repress, for he wishes to grasp and convey the emotional impact of
the girls’ deaths on the African-American community. Lee is obviously
not just concerned with recovering the truth through an investigation
that drives him to examine archival documents.10 Even though he resorts
to the same narrative strategies of compilation filmmaking as Emile de
Antonio and Errol Morris, collecting interviews and archival material to
plumb the past, Lee’s endeavor does not aim to produce objective truth.
His documentaries blur the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction,
thereby putting forth the uncertainties raised by the investigative process.
The portrayal of the “four little girls” limits the documentary project, for
Lee can only give us access to memories of them, prompting the viewer to
imagine their characters from the anecdotes related about them. Nichols
contends that the documentary and the nondocumentary films overlap as
categories, for filmmakers experiment with the medium to interpret the
documents and facts exposed.11
Spike Lee’s second nonfiction film broaches the radicalization of the
civil rights struggle through the emergence of the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense. Rather than retrace the life of Huey P. Newton in a biopic
that would strive to capture the elusive personality of the Panthers’ leader,
A Huey P. Newton Story is a recording of Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-
man show first presented in February 1997 at the Joseph Papp Public
Theater on Broadway. While the film plays on the fascination elicited by

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the nationalist rebel, Spike Lee deconstructs the iconic figure of Huey P.
Newton by laying stress on the political reasoning behind the party’s call
for revolutionary social action. The credits of A Huey P. Newton Story are
conspicuously edited from an array of archival footage used to convey
contextual information and to construct the visual discourse of the film,
thus adding Lee’s personal perspective to Smith’s portrayal of Huey P.
Newton. The focus on archival footage anchors the documentary in the
1960s, providing a historical background to the performance. The film
starts with a sequence that cuts from a prologue to the informative credits:
the story of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is encapsulated in
a few iconic shots taken from television newsreel archives whereas red
typed letters appear over a grey wire netting drawn on a dark screen,
giving background information on the making of the film. Cross editing
disrupts the narrative flow in A Huey P. Newton Story, signifying gaps
in the history of the Panthers, whereas the motif of the wire netting
metaphorically connotes a prison tale. The opening sequence articulates
the distance between the media story of the Panthers and the version
endorsed by Lee, signified by the slow musical score which downplays the
dramatic media spin. The interstices between the two narrative strands,
opposing archival footage to the title credits, shed light on the spectacle
of the Panthers’ political performances, attracting cameras and reporters
in search of sensational breaking news. The mise en scène organized by
the Panthers themselves creates a mise-en-abyme in the film, which chal-
lenges the documentary form to engage with the notion of representation.
The events that marked the decade are visually summarized through
iconic scenes: the Panthers demonstrated along with peace activists against
the Vietnam war; Malcolm X called for change; the counterculture of the
hippies blossomed; Angela Davis accused the police of discriminating
against African Americans; Edgar J. Hoover warned the people against
Newton as a violent revolutionary; Orson Welles characterized Hamlet
in one of Newton’s favorite plays as “a gangster with a conscience”; the
Panthers were dubbed a “threat to harmony” by Oakland’s mayor; window
posters of Newton were targeted with gunshots; Newton was arrested for
allegedly killing a policeman; Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were mur-
dered by “99 shots” fired by the police12; Hollywood star Marlon Brando
took a public stance in support of the Panthers at Bobby Hutton’s funeral;
Martin Luther King called for a “revolution of values.” Every piece of film
divulges incomplete information as though the story of the Panther Party
for Self-Defense had not yet been written. Archival footage in the credit
sequence spans the events from Newton’s arrest in 1967 to Fred Hamp-

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 15

ton’s murder in 1969; it is not randomly organized nor chronologically

arranged as could be suggested by the compilation of facts it covers. Fast
editing adds to the tense and confused atmosphere of the period, envi-
sioning the Black Panther Party as part of the counterculture movement
of the 1960s.
The opening sequence depicts the Panthers’ activists demonstrating
outside the Alameda courthouse in Oakland with a reporter cynically
commenting on the load of work awaiting the Panthers’ lawyers working
for Newton’s defense attorney Charles Garry, considering the high rate of
arrests that took place among the Panthers. Another reporter then appears
on screen, faltering in his speech and calling for a “cut” that points to
the media’s everyday mise en scène of the world in the news programs.
The film cuts from the media spectacle of the Panthers to the responses
they provoked. It includes an interview of an African-American woman
testifying about gunshots she witnessed in front of the camera which
lingers on graffiti adorning the outside wall of a tenement house (“off
the pigs”), thus dramatizing the risk taken by the television crew in a
Panther dominated area and by the policemen venturing in a quarter that
has dangerously run out of control. The close-up on the words defiantly
sprayed on the wall draws attention to the engagement of the Panthers,
who conspicuously claim the territory with “graffiti style [that] disrupts
the aesthetic of authority.”13 Through the insertion of a behind-the-scenes
glance at media reporting, the documentarian self-reflexively pinpoints
that the positioning of the camera constructs the representation of the
world and frames its perceptions.
Based on a one-man show whose narrative Lee interweaves with
archival images, A Huey P. Newton Story interestingly merges fiction and
nonfiction which documentary critic Michael Renov considers as two
interrelated narrative modes that share key conceptual and discursive
characteristics. Facts and fiction merge when the camera starts rolling,
transforming an interviewee’s words and body language into acting for
the camera. Playing the role of Huey P. Newton and assuming his polit-
ical voice, Roger Guenveur Smith’s interpretation enhances the process
of filmmaking surrounding him. Renov notes that the creative power
embedded in the documentary when stating that “nonfiction contains any
number of ‘fictive’ elements, moments at which a presumably objective
representation of the world encounters the necessity of creative inter-
vention.”14 Nonfiction filmmaking relies on the same processes of narr-
ativization and characterization that underpin fiction films, making use
of stylistic elements including angle shots and editing to dramatize the

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nonfiction stories investigated by a conspicuous camera. Lee resorts to

recognizable tropes such as low-angle shots reminiscent of Do the Right
Thing and musical tunes used in other fiction films,15 which signify his
presence behind the camera and contribute to the transformation of his
interviewees into characters.

From the Participatory to the Performative Mode

In Issues in Contemporary Documentary, Professor of communications

Jane Chapman assesses the state of current documentary film practice
through a series of case studies that explore the creative tension between
two contradictory intents within the genre:16 she argues that the perform-
ative documentary oscillates between “two poles of either letting the event
speak for itself (observation) or providing a single authoritative voice
(narration).”17 The consistent appeal of the documentary resides in its con-
flicting approach to the real world, opposing an unmediated reflection to
a subjective perspective. Spike Lee’s documentaries draw their fascinating
power from this negotiation between two viewing modes: apart from a
few questions that can be overheard, Lee remains in the background and
offers screen space to his filmed subjects, whose stories he shapes into
a narrative. The voices of the characters interviewed come to the fore:
witnesses testify to the truth of events they recount, voicing their views
and feelings toward the situations they mention.
Characterization is best achieved through performance in Spike
Lee’s documentaries, empowering the interviewees who directly address
the camera, eagerly staging their speech and action to make themselves
heard. Following Nichols’s documentary classification, Lee’s nonfiction
films interweave the participatory and performative modes. Although
they mainly revolve around a web of interviews, illustrating a pattern of
collaboration between filmmaker and subjects, they nonetheless bring the
emotional intensities of embodied experience and knowledge to the fore
through characterization. Nichols explains that “performative documen-
taries intensify the rhetorical desire to be compelling and tie it less to a
persuasive goal than an affective one.”18 Spike Lee develops characteriza-
tion to overcome the boundaries of the participatory mode, prompting his
interviewees to bring in such props as photographs and objects presented
as pieces of evidence that characterize their relationship to the past. The
documentary participants therefore seem to pose as themselves, which
turns the whole filmmaking process into an empowering experience for

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 17

them. Lee’s camera operates as a go-between between the personal and

the public, allowing private comments to become political statements as
they are broadcast on television, reaching a wider audience.
The documentary series When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four
Acts and If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise provides an illu-
minating example of the power which can be drawn from the camera,
reversing the dynamics of filmmaking: the camera’s investigative function
is reduced by each interviewee’s mise en scène. Rather than being the
object of the gaze, the interviewees become the authors of their speech,
which they embody and interpret in front of the camera eye. The two
films illustrate the journey of Phyllis Montana-Leblanc whose story is
disseminated throughout the episodes of the series, making her a familiar
figure by the end of the first season of the series. A few minutes before
the ending credits of Act 4 in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four
Acts, she speaks to the camera in a direct address. Sitting inside her Fed-
eral Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) trailer, she reads a
very intimate statement about her experience of Katrina, which testifies
to the relationship of trust and confidence that has developed between
herself and the filmmaker:

Not just the levees broke, the spirit broke, my spirit broke
The families broke apart
I want my mama back, I want my sister back, I want my
nephew back.
The auction block broke from so many African American
bodies.
The sense of direction was broken because of all the darkness
There was light from time to time but they broke away and
left us.
My being together broke when I fell apart.
The smell broke away from my skin when I came out of the
waters
The waters that came and stood, still, with the bodies of my
people.
The dogs, shit, pigs, rats, snakes and “heard of ” alligators.
The broken smile, the broken minds, the broken lives.
And you know something? Out of all this brokenness I have
begun to mend
With God and my deep deep commitment to infinite
strength, to never give up

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I am mending, God willing, for a long long time.

So when you see the waters, when you see the levees breaking,
Know what they really broke along with them. [WTLB, End
of Act 4]

The commentary soundtrack of the DVD discloses unexpected details as

to that scene: Lee explains that the woman proposed to read a poem she
had composed the night before and he turned the camera on, sensing that
it would provide further insight into post-Katrina New Orleans, where
chaos was still visually and psychologically overwhelming. He asked her
to re-enact her reading in order to adjust lighting and framing, which
provides a highly moving and thought-provoking moment in the film.
One stops gazing at the spectacle of destruction to ponder on the words
the woman utters, her voice betraying the deep emotions she struggles
with. Viewers sense that her statement was indeed no improvisation: she
reads out the poem articulating what it means to go on living after Katrina
has torn her life apart, giving vent to her frustration and disappointment
with the authorities in charge. As an active participant in the film, she
self-consciously opened the door of her FEMA trailer to expose what
her life had become to outside observers, thus reversing the relation-
ship which the camera establishes with the filmed subject: she would
not content herself with being a witness whose testimony was recorded,
for she was determined to reach out to the outside world. Her private
thoughts become political statements as she sits reading in front of Spike
Lee’s camera, which represents a window onto the world for the woman
who grabs the opportunity to make herself heard. Her comments are not
unlike the rap songs of Shelton Shakespeare Alexander with their blend
of politics and poetry; the young man sings his own rap at the end of
Act 2 to recount his experience of Katrina (WTLB). Talking in front of
Spike Lee’s camera obviously became part of the healing process for Phyllis
Montana-Leblanc—and other filmed participants, for she made efforts to
jot down the words she wanted to communicate and to have the audience
listen to. She even wrote a book after the film, which Spike Lee prefaced,
thus pursuing the autobiographical narration she had started in the film.19
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise begins with a prologue by
the same Phyllis Montana-Leblanc who delivers a two-minute soliloquy
and stages her performance in stark contrast to her final appearance in
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts: she was seated in a
FEMA trailer then, bending over to read her text in a low voice, whereas
she delivers her speech like a rap song with fast rhythm and alliterations

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 19

that underline her bold defiance in the sequel to the film. One can only
be struck by the change of tone that permeates her voice as she endorses
the role of a spokesperson for New Orleans African-American commu-
nity. As a witness and a survivor, she has relinquished the first person
narration to enhance the political overtones of her comments, using the
plural “we” to convey collective sentiment. She raises her voice and her
arms to physically embody the resilience she has developed over the past
five years, thus fostering aliveness in her performance of resistance. The
background provides a theatrical setting that points to the integration
of ruins into local landscape: the woman stands in front of a rundown
house whose barred windows suggest the place has been abandoned,
maybe even condemned for safety reasons, visually exhibiting the trac-
es of Katrina’s devastating impact on building structures. Rather than
convey an image of destruction, the façade has been painted over with
graffiti depicting New Orleans skyline, thus hinting at the redeeming
power of art. Phyllis Montana-Leblanc’s introduction to the film discloses
the psychological journey she has made since Katrina, transcending her
frustration and depression into an activist commitment that pervades
every line she speaks out loud.
In When the Levees Broke, the woman recounted that she had cried
for help on a drowning rooftop, desperately watching helicopters hover
about and away. At the time she was concerned with bearing witness about
her experience of Katrina whereas she draws a list of political demands
in If God Is Willing, demonstrating that she has engaged in a healing
process by reflecting on the political and collective dimension of Katrina.
Calling for change with the past, Phyllis Montana-Leblanc’s presentation
foreshadows the documentary’s thematic concerns: poverty, death statis-
tics, education, levee maintenance, politicians’ lies, health care, corpo-
rate greed, environmental issues will be broached, widening the scope of
the documentary beyond the racial issues Spike Lee brought to the fore
when dealing with Katrina in When the Levees Broke. Her opening lines
point to the prejudices that victimized the low-income residents in New
Orleans, suffering from the cold-blooded contempt of those “in tailored
suits” whom she accuses of being responsible for the deaths she meta-
phorically evokes as “hooded white sheets.” The recurring line “If God
Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise” evokes a natural cycle that cannot
be broken, suggesting that New Orleans’s fate belongs to forces that are
beyond man’s power to control. The speaker, however, uses the anaphora
“no more” to suggest Katrina should prompt a rupture with the racial,
segregated past of the city:

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No more weeping mothers as their child’s body lies in the streets.

No more hate from those whose tailored suits still resemble
hooded white sheets.
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise
No more closing schools in all-black neighborhood meant to
teach.
No more lying about the numbers they said they couldn’t reach.
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise
No more nightmare of breaching levees, black waters that did
come, murder and drown.
No more silence, Tea parties, racial division, poverty, yes, we
can.
The pavements we will pound.
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise
No more leaving poor folks to die because they cannot afford
medical care.
No more singing we shall overcome ’cause we’re already there.
No more political pushers who use our time to sell their lies.
No more sacrificing the American people leaving us with noth-
ing but sighs.
No more total audacity, explosive fire is gone. Bodies are nine
plus two.
No more corporate oil wanting their lives back. Indictment of
criminal charges, the whole damn crew.
No more use of our Gulf Coast waters, wetlands, heritage and
soil.
No more “up yours, Louisiana.”
But we all know there’s blood in the BP oil.
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise.

Phyllis Montana-Leblanc’s stance of individual fortitude is both appealing

and disconcerting, expressing her sense of outrage and frustration in the
face of continued perceived injustice.
The last but one line of her soliloquy evokes the 2010 Gulf Coast
oil spill, known as the Deepwater Horizon incident, which destroyed a
significant amount of fish and wildlife before it was finally contained. The
oil slick caused havoc that affected Americans along the Mississippi Gulf
Coast beyond class and race. As she channels her rage into powerful lines
that connote the unending struggle which underpins individual and col-
lective survival in the “new New Orleans,” Phyllis embodies a civic stance
that has reverberated throughout the city, giving rise to a network of citizen

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 21

initiatives led by individual celebrities such as Brad Pitt and by the collec-
tive mobilization of civil society. Sociologists J. Steven Picou and Brent K.
Marshall note that “countless private citizens from New Orleans and the
Gulf Coast have volunteered both time and resources to initiate a grouping
of their neighborhoods and communities”20 and to organize life after Katri-
na. Lee develops what could be dubbed a “citizens’ documentary” through
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, articulating the concerns of all
those who have been affected by the neoliberal choices guiding reconstruc-
tion in New Orleans. The film highlights the commitment of a group of
citizen activists among the interviewees who, while addressing such issues
as education, housing, labor, and crime on a local level, testify to broader
national and international dynamics. As he investigates further the con-
ditions of reconstruction in post-Katrina New Orleans, Lee provides an
overview of the impact of neoliberal policies, which more often than not
are perceived in a negative light by the African-American residents. He
adopts a militant tone which is missing from the other films, proposing
models of action through the characters he accompanies.
Spike Lee’s documentaries are mainly built around a web of inter-
views, providing a host of individual perspectives on the stories which
constitute the narrative backbone of the films. This technique allows the
filmmaker to grasp some events such as Katrina from various angles,
assessing the multiple consequences of the breach of the levees for a diver-
sity of people. The films achieve an overview by combining an overlay of
archival material with the voiceover of witnesses, whose views either con-
verge or diverge, thus constructing a dialectical relationship between the
present and the past, the private and the public, articulated to issues of race
and class. This type of construction enhances the discourse built around
characters or events, the perception of which was reductively framed by
the media. Not only are the “four little girls” fleshed out by the memories
confessed in front of the camera, but Michael Jackson is also humanized
through the voices that recall him in Bad 25. The interplay of several
documentary modes highlights the prominent role given to interviews in
Lee’s films; however, they are incorporated in a filmic discourse that first
and foremost displays the director’s creative input and political views.

Discerning the Authorial Voice

Contrary to Michael Moore who conspicuously stages himself as a film-

maker in search of truth,21 Spike Lee remains almost invisible in his
nonfiction films. The overall narratives nonetheless betray his pervasive

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authorial presence: his musical scores poeticize the filmed landscapes;

editing produces dramatic effect and conveys his reasoning; low-angle
shots express his presence behind the camera as he strives to empower
his interviewees through framing; he may even orally intrude in some
of the filmed testimonies although he is nowhere to be seen on screen.
Lee draws attention to racial prejudice by interviewing characters whose
speech endorses stereotypical views. The filmmaker’s voice can first be
heard in Act 2 of When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, ask-
ing Emil Dumesnil, a white man, whether he was looking for Bin Laden
when he returned to the Lower Ninth Ward with a 9mm handgun. Lee’s
mocking tone exposes the racial bias of his interviewee’s fear-induced
self-protective violence, whereas the question enhances the shocking irony
of the situation he wishes to denounce as fear prevailed over solidari-
ty. His selection of interviews undergirds the dramatic arc of the films,
retaining the most outrageous statements among white characters whose
racist views he thus spotlights.
Spike Lee’s interviewing technique echoes Claude Lanzmann’s obses-
sive search for technical details when investigating the processes of human
destruction in Shoah (1985). The directors thereby dig up stories that
account for the crushing psychological trauma their interviewees have
been through. When Will Chittenden explains he has been on medication
for months, for sleep would never come after Katrina, Lee asks him to
name the type of medication he has been taking. The man gives a long
list of brand-name pills, which attests to the trauma he has undergone
and to its enduring effect in the present. Paris Ervin restrains his tears
when recalling that he discovered his own mother’s corpse in a house that
had not been searched by FEMA contrary to what the markings on the
door indicated, which prompted him to imagine her death more vividly
as her body was found crushed under a refrigerator [WTLB, Act 4, 14:00].
Editor Sam Pollard explains that he selected from among a hundred and
thirty interviews the stories which fit into Lee’s narrative of devastation in
New Orleans. Gathering together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, he helped
produce a film which puts forth the witnesses’ experiences instead of the
filmmaker’s authorial voice. His editing work consisted in organizing the
film’s narrative from the witnesses’ accounts, whose emotional authenticity
he strove to retain:

Everybody’s got different pieces of the story, and someone

who might be good at the beginning is not so good when it
comes to talking about the evacuation. Someone who doesn’t

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 23

say much in the beginning is great when it comes to talking

about the flooding. So I’m trying to find the rhythms of these
people, to create a journey, an arc. . . . If you find the right
characters, the right interviews, they can give you a visceral
sense of immediacy, of being there, so you feel emotionally
connected to it. When this man tells you about finding his
mother’s body under the refrigerator, because she hadn’t gotten
out . . . [. . .] You try to get out of the way, not to condense
too much, edit too much.22

Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig (1969) provided the model that
many documentary filmmakers emulated in the 1970s and 1980s, com-
bining a rich variety of archival source material with trenchant interviews
to recount the background to the Vietnam War in a way radically at
odds with the American government’s official version.23 Drawing from the
compilation montage which de Antonio turned into a powerful discursive
device, Lee constructs a multiple perspective narrative, which confers an
interesting polyphonic aspect to the films. Different layers of information
are interwoven as narrative levels mingle, shifting from the past to the
present, from the personal to the political, from the intimate to the public.
Experimenting with Sergei Eisenstein’s concept of intellectual montage,
which puts forth the use of colliding shots as a structuring principle, Lee
questions the representation of African-American figures on screen. The
witnesses’ personal stories either combine or collide with archival media
footage, challenging the monologic discourse of the media with an array
of anecdotes that testify to a diversity of experiences.
Even though the performative documentaries put forth the witness-
es’ acts of bearing witness, Lee introduces a critical edge into the films’
enquiries—either endorsing his subjects’ testimonies or interrogating the
truth of their comments. While grounded on the collaboration between
filmmaker and interviewees, the narrative is fashioned by the filmmaker
whose views pervade the film. Dramatic camera angles function as indices
of his authorial role, articulating a critical view throughout the narratives
and even conveying his own judgment on his interviewees’ statements. Lee
heightens the urgency of the message his interviewees wish to get across
by physically engaging with them. In If God Is Willing and Da Creek
Don’t Rise, he uses a tracking shot to film the housing projects that have
been closed since mandatory evacuation suggesting through the camera’s
movement that the process of demolition cannot be prevented. His camera
becomes a powerless witness; the panorama created depicts a landscape

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of desolation as the red brick buildings have been abandoned, board-

ed up, and the windows sealed out to prevent anyone from getting in.24
The filmmaker’s physical commitment is made conspicuous as he walks
behind M. Juakali with a handheld camera which captures the images of
a walled city. The Saint Bernard projects, which M. Juakali explains were
built during the Roosevelt era, have disappeared from view behind the
panels that hide the demolition site. The activist’s commentary provides
an explanatory voice-over to the blocks of empty apartments, filmed in a
long tracking shot that underscores the absence of residents:

All of this area here—we had 1500 families, mostly poor, black
women with children. And right now, it’s empty. These are the
kinds of building they had before the storm, solid brick, they
were built by the Works Progress Association during the Roo-
sevelt era. During the storm hardly anyone evacuated because
we felt we could survive. We had three-story building and we
felt it was better than going to a shelter. [IGIW, Part 1, 34:49]

Not only does Lee offer his interviewees a platform to address an audi-
ence his camera will give them access to, thereby expressing his engage-
ment with the issues mentioned, but he also includes them in a critical
discourse through analytical editing. Some interviews are used in coun-
terpoint to each other, blatantly pointing to the distance between the
speakers. The director thus reveals institutional forms of white supremacy
when filming Mitch Landrieu (lieutenant governor of Louisiana, today’s
mayor of New Orleans) standing in front of his New Orleans mansion,
which rises clean and undamaged in the background, reflecting a dif-
ferent social status to the displaced, ruined houses of the Lower Ninth
Ward.25 The documentary lays bare racist tensions underlying the façade
of American life,26 expressing Lee’s critical views through angles and jump
cuts that are easily identified as recurring features in the director’s fic-
tion films—including Do the Right Thing (1989). The famous “racial slur
montage” through which the characters of the film express their anger at
each other, based on their own prejudice in a multicultural community
divided by race and class, is transferred to If God Is Willing and Da Creek
Don’t Rise: the camera abruptly cuts from upward medium close shots to
frontal close-ups of a man wearing a tee-shirt that features New Orleans
black and gold striped flag, standing for the “Who dat nation” in refer-
ence to the community of supporters behind the Saints’ football team.
Quick editing dramatizes the words of the speaker as he bellows a series

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 25

of variations on the acronyms of British Petroleum, labeled as “billionaire

pirates” and “belligerent plunderers,” thus leveling mounting criticism at
the firm’s environmental policies after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil
spill in an entertaining fashion.
Lee may not conduct ambush interviews; however, he metaphorical-
ly comments on the events recounted through the choice of a setting that
denotes the witnesses’ experience.27 The images of When the Levees Broke:
A Requiem in Four Acts consistently point to the relationship between
interviewees and place: the storm shattered the witnesses’ sense of place
and the filmed landscape conveys the extent of destruction on their every-
day landmarks. Whether they stand in a derelict landscape or sit still in
front of the camera with a colored wall in the background, the witnesses’
tales of displacement and memories of terror are reflected by the setting
around them as all landmarks have been turned over or shifted away
by the flows of the flood. When the camera tracks along a street amidst
the rubble with Terence Blanchard playing his trumpet in a deadly silent
neighborhood, trying to appropriate the place by filling it with music
[WTLB, Act 3, 41:00], the film must needs grasp a feeling of estrangement
from an environment that seems to resist the people’s return.
Wherever they speak from, the interviewees look lost in their imme-
diate surroundings, which display no personal or intimate connection:
the pink wall used as a background to the interview with Clovina “Rita”
McCoy and Catherine Montana Gordon (Phyllis Montana-Leblanc’s sister
and mother) shows no personal item as though the two women had been
cut off from their past by moving away from their home city to Humble,
Texas. Their testimony points to the disruption of the affective relationship
between individuals and places: the women stand in front of the house
they bought in Humble, which however displays their indifference to the
place. There are neither trees nor any flowers adorning the garden around
the house, which does not seem to have been invested with affection.
Humble is the site of no cultural or family memory for New Orleanians
who look back at the Big Easy as their home city. Still, Lee tries to counter
this feeling by creating a sense of belonging as he specifies each inter-
viewee’s name along with the quarter where they live or lived in the city,
thus symbolically trying to restore the broken link with New Orleans. Just
before the fourth episode’s ending credits, every person interviewed in the
series gives their names and address, speaking through painting frames
that invite us to see them as characters belonging to the same community.
The frame serves as an iconographical reminder of the director’s spin on
their stories, further underlying the role of portraits in his filmmaking.

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Figure 1.1. The closing sequence of When the Levees Broke: a Requiem in Four
Acts shows all the characters interviewed in the film through the frame of a paint-
ing, which signifies the ambiguity between fiction and nonfiction that character-
izes Lee’s documentary portraits. Phyllis Montana-Leblanc stands at Armstrong
airport, where she was stranded for hours before boarding a plane. Courtesy of
Photofest

Jane Chapman observes that contemporary documentaries are

grounded in the experiences of the filmed characters who are granted
a form of authorial voice through the films that stage their stories: “The
participants seem to be generating their own cinematic text, rather than
being guided. This gives the impression that they are integral to the
text and to the production device, rather than merely being recorded
by it.”28 This ambiguity pervades the portrait documentaries dedicated
to Jim Brown and Kobe Bryant—two African-American figures whose
achievements the filmmaker wishes to underline by giving them a voice.
The critical distance that seeps in such historical documentaries as Four
Little Girls seems to disappear as the two men contribute to drawing their
self-portrait. Jim Brown: All American (2002) begins as a sports documen-
tary dedicated to the charismatic figure of Jim Brown, whose exceptional
career as a football player paved the way for his success in Hollywood as

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 27

a hyper-masculine hero in the Blaxploitation cycle. While the biographical

documentary maps out the structural barriers Jim Brown encountered
on his way up and down the social ladder of American society, leading
him from the limelight to the tabloids’ gossip columns, the first-person
narration endows Jim Brown with an authorial voice, which allows him
to pose as the hero of his own life story and to refurbish his tarnished
public image.
Brown lingers on the practical details of his game and his self-im-
posed strenuous training when addressing Lee’s camera, unlike Kobe Bry-
ant who indirectly speaks to the intrusive cameras when devising team
strategies during a game which he retrospectively comments on in voice-
over. Kobe Doin’ Work (2009) does not tell the personal story of Kobe
Bryant, giving neither biographical detail nor personal information about
the player who skipped college and integrated the National Basketball
Association straight after high school. Kobe Doin’ Work draws attention
to Bryant’s dynamic role within the Lakers and captures his determination
to win, expressing the filmmaker’s fascination for the Lakers star player
whose glowing career has nurtured many more hoop dreams. Close shots
betray the aficionado’s passionate gaze at the game, focusing on Bryant’s
outstanding talent at throwing down dunks and delivering blind passes
when his team played San Antonio Spurs at the Staples Center on April
13, 2008. Bryant’s voice-over strives to demystify basketball by depicting
it as his everyday life, presenting himself as a worker on the court under
the guidance of coach Phil Jackson. Spike Lee and Kobe Bryant can be
heard discussing the technical details of the game, which may sound quite
boring unless the spectator is a keen basketball follower. The interview
happens out of shot and the duration of the game generates a sense of
frustration, enhancing the split between Bryant’s image as a Lakers star
player and his view of himself as an ordinary basketball player.
As suggested through the latest example, Lee disrupts the specta-
cle of his films by resorting to self-reflexive techniques that prompt the
viewer to question the very images he is watching. Ellen C. Scott points
out the duality which characterizes Spike Lee’s films, using “the power
of the word to challenge the image track” and exploring “the ability of
sound to provide a cultural depth of field—a rich store of information
about culture—that challenges the stereotypical, flattening tendencies of
the screen image.”29 While the interstices between the visual and oral
tracks more often than not convey the author’s critical voice, articulating
an illuminating perspective on the tackled subjects, they also reveal the
ethical underpinnings of his engagement.

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The Reflexive Mode of Engagement

Although Bill Nichols approaches documentary filmmaking through a

chronological lens, for example underlining the fact that the develop-
ment of portable synchronous sound recording devices underpinned the
growing popularity of the observational and participatory modes, he also
emphasizes that the different documentary modes provide but a loose
frame of affiliation.30 Spike Lee’s documentaries are best defined as non-
fiction films, a term that signifies their ambiguous status considering they
exhibit qualities common to all the proposed modes. Nonfiction writer
and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly Robert Vare argues that “narra-
tive nonfiction bridges those connections between events that have taken
place, and imbues them with meaning and emotion,”31 merging nonfic-
tional data with such fictional devices as narrative spines, characterization
and suspense. Narrative nonfiction therefore draws its entertaining power
from the fictional devices it employs to report factual events. Lee’s doc-
umentary filmmaking practice resonates with this definition, enhancing
the power of fictional strategies to capture more than the facts.
Lee’s documentaries operate in several modes, shifting from the
poetic (e.g., the credit sequence of Four Little Girls) to the expository
(through a compilation of archival footage), merging the participatory
(based on interviews) and the performative (allowing the witnesses to
perform their speech at their pace). His films are not only characterized
by formal heterogeneity, but they also call attention to the principles that
underlie the four modes. The filmmaker’s engagement with the issues
broached in the documentaries is made visible through visual cues that
undermine the illusion of unmediated access to the real. Whether he
verbally intrudes in an interview through an ironical remark or a sincere
comment or visually expresses his presence through a few skewed angles,
Lee points to the film as a construction or a representation. When juggling
with archival newsreel footage and personal photographs in a compila-
tion montage, the filmmaker deconstructs the elements of a visual culture
that has shaped the viewers’ knowledge of the past or their perception
of iconic African-American figures. Spike Lee’s documentaries are highly
self-reflexive works, which prompt us to interrogate the representation at
work in his own films.
The title of A Huey P. Newton Story epitomizes this practice, hinting
at the fluid boundaries between fiction and nonfiction by turning the
biographical endeavor into “a” story, which suggests that characterization
may only allow a limited aspect of a multifaceted personality to emerge

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 29

from the documentary film. Actor Roger Guenveur Smith’s performance

received critical acclaim in the New York Times with Peter Marks com-
menting on his voice as “a soft, pinched whine at times carelessly feminine
and always comically out of tune with the intimidating message of the
legendary black power grip that Newton founded with Bobby Seale thirty
years ago.”32 The remark pinpoints the discrepancy between the Panthers’
carefully constructed iconography of strong masculinity and their leader’s
poor oratory, which the actor explored to portray the contradictory nature
of the man. Smith introduces ambiguity and complexity into the char-
acterization of Newton, pointing to paradoxical traits of his personality.
The filmmaker exhibits the stage of the performance, maintaining distance
between his camera and his subject—Huey P. Newton as impersonated by
Smith—by including the standing audience in the frame. Archival footage
is projected behind the actor on the background wall, creating a visual
context to the play and a cultural frame of reference. Instead of giving in
to the fascination Newton could elicit as a self-made icon, Lee endeav-
ors to recover the Panther’s political message by subduing the mediated
images, which turned the Panthers into a threat that had to be contained
according to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
The reflexive dimension of Lee’s documentaries promotes political
reflexivity and prompts awareness of the ideological underpinning of
visual representations. Nichols argues that formal and politically reflex-
ive documentaries open a gap between knowledge and desire, provoking
“awareness of the assumptions that support a given social structure.”33
Spike Lee achieves this effect in A Huey P. Newton Story by heightening
the viewers’ awareness of the artificiality of the film they are watching:
lighting, microphone, audience, setting are part of the props used to
dramatize the one-man show, emphasizing the construction of a political
rhetoric that lays stress on representation. The introduction of archival
footage in counterpoint to Smith’s show prods the viewer to question
the image of Huey P. Newton and the politics of representation adopted
by the Panthers.34 The figure of Newton seems to emerge from Smith’s
body, with the physical resemblance between the two men reinforcing the
confusion between fiction and nonfiction. The camera constantly moves
around Smith, underscoring tense body language as the actor twitches
about in his chair. While Smith portrays a character whose jerky speech
and nervous pose convey Newton’s embarrassment when taking center
stage in front of ogling cameras and curious viewers, Lee highlights the
poor stage performance of the iconic figure by visually enclosing him in
an intense bright focused beam of light.

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Spike Lee develops strong characters in his biographical documenta-

ries; nonetheless, the use of self-reflexive techniques evokes the deception
of filmmaking and the limits of such endeavor. The interviews garnered
from former friends and collaborators of Michael Jackson reveal but an
imperfect portrait of the singer, whose personality remains a mystery by
the end of Bad 25. The documentary retraces Michael Jackson’s musical
career since his 1987 blockbuster album entitled Bad, conveying Lee’s
admiration for the singer’s artistic talent as the “king of pop” who rev-
olutionized the music industry through original musical compositions,
dance performances, and marketing strategies, exploiting the market of
musical videos to entice a crossover audience. Lee reconstructs the char-
acter of the star whose image was tarnished by later scandals which the
filmmaker would rather not mention, for they draw attention away from
his achievements as an African-American iconic figure. The film closes
with the star interpreting Man in the Mirror on a concert stage, captur-
ing the artist as a shadow standing with his arms stretched in a backlit
pose of crucifixion, suggesting the film has lifted only part of the mask
he was wearing. The narrative construction of Bad 25 is evocative of a
failed biographical attempt that echoes the narrative puzzle of Citizen
Kane. Each interviewee holds a piece of the puzzle which the filmmaker
strives to put together, achieving but a flawed portrait of the man who
remains an enigma.
In the prologue (which was added to the DVD version) of Kobe
Doin’ Work, Lee explains that filming the basketball player was an exciting
adventure: thirty cameras were set up to follow Bryant during the whole
game, either on the court or in the secrecy of the locker room, from a
variety of angles. Lee’s portrait documentary gives in to the fascination
elicited by the star athlete by emphasizing the player’s athletic perfor-
mances through a careful choice of angles that exhibit individual skills.
Lee deems basketball is an “art form” in The Best Seat in the House: A
Basketball Memoir35 and idealizes the figure of Kobe Bryant as a star ath-
lete. The film’s rhythm is hectic, intensifying the velocity of the game by
following motion and action through quick cuts, close-ups, and zooms on
Kobe Bryant’s concentrated and excited face. “Basketball is sexy, showing
glistening and well-honed male bodies in a state of semi-undress, clad in
skimpy jerseys and shorts” argues media scholar Douglas Kellner, allud-
ing to the homoerotic spectacle of professional basketball.36 Lee turns
the game into such spectacle through aestheticizing the black bodies,
indulging in the pleasure of watching the athletes move and pass the ball
according to the defensive tactics and offensive strategies they devised.

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 31

Much of the game is made of repetitive actions, which also accounts for
the impressive number of cameras used: the filmmaker counterbalances
the sense of repetition that grows as the film unfolds by changing shot
angles. With thirty cameras around the court, Lee is able to magnify the
spectacle of television basketball which Douglas Kellner considers as the
ideal sport to be viewed on the small screen, because it is “fast-paced, full
of action, and resplendent with spectacle. Hard-charging full-court action,
balletic shots, and ubiquitous instant replays make basketball the right
sport for the era of MTC and ESPN.”37 By slowing down the pace of the
game, the documentary adds to its spectacular qualities. The camera is
often placed close to the floor, capturing the bodies in action from below
and looking up to their flying figures.
Even though the results of the game were well-known when the
film was released, Lee reintroduces suspense by filming the bodies at
close range. The viewer can spot details and realize how body contact
and fouls may affect a player’s move on the court. Although dedicated to
Kobe Bryant, the film dramatizes Lee’s acute perception of the game by
focusing on the quick moves that make basketball so lively; the musical
score includes jazz themes that combine with the energizing atmosphere
produced by the competition, with the voices of supporters singing or
blowing the horn in the background. Although no fiction film, Kobe Doin’
Work depicts basketball as “a site for fantasy play shaped by discours-
es of imagination, projection, dreaming, desire, yearning and longing.
Sport [. . .] has historically provided a fantasy space in which black bod-
ies can be gazed upon.”38 Lee aestheticizes the game when he cuts to
black-and-white stills freezing the athlete’s movements into photographic
poses, allowing the viewer to revel in the pleasure of the gaze which
objectifies the black body. The filmmaker drops a light piano melody
over the cries and applause of the crowd, creating a distance between
the spectacle recorded live and the retrospective glance, which plung-
es the viewer into a dreamlike atmosphere. These black-and-white stills
punctuate the narrative of the game, suspending time and deifying Kobe
Bryant’s athletic figure. Either suspended in the air or dunking the ball
into the hoop, Kobe Bryant embodies grace and virtuosity on the court,
inheriting the flying mythology which was born with Michael Jordan—a
figure of transcendence according to Cheryl L. Cole.39 These shots depict
the effortless art of dribbling the ball while underlining the beauty of
the athletic body. Kobe Doin’ Work being coproduced by ESPN, Lee was
expected to fulfil the expectations of the sports-entertainment network by
enhancing the athlete’s iconic status. Try as he might to give him a voice

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32 / The Spike Lee Brand

by offering him the opportunity to comment on the game, Lee cannot

counterbalance the reifying power of the media gaze which has turned
Kobe Bryant into a commodity.
The first sequence is filmed outside the Staples Center in Los Ange-
les and captures the glittering image of the Lakers through a low-angle
shot that signifies the distance between the man on the street and the
players whose portraits adorn the top of the façade, embodying the myth
of success that undergirds their elevation to the status of sport celebri-
ty. Bryant’s voice-over may be used as a self-reflexive tool intruding on
the pleasure of the gaze, for it is detached from his body and ironically
connotes the fact that the film does not relate him to a world beyond
basketball; however, it does not allow him to assert himself as a subject.
Kobe Bryant’s personal characteristics merge with his identity as a play-
er; the film portrays no social commitment beyond the court, nor any
political insight. In the closing sequence, he is seen leaving the arena in a
glass-tinted car that offers no glimpse of his face, thus marking the barrier
between his private and public life. The camera will not penetrate the
intimacy of a shielded environment, thus restricting the subject of the film
to basketball. The ending sequence of Kobe Doin’ Work echoes the closing
credits of Bad 25 when backlighting reveals a shadow that may indicate
a crack in the constructed image of Michael Jackson. The documentaries
do not achieve narrative closure and these characters seem to evade the
camera, pointing out the limits of the documentary genre itself as it can
only grapple with appearances of truth.
By tackling conspiracy theories as relevant information and through
the focus on the testimonies of New Orleanians who debate possible
explanations for the government’s mishandling of the crisis that developed
in the wake of Katrina, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
self-reflexively challenges the power of the documentary to uncover truth.
Rather than investigate the facts, the film explores the flood of rumors
engendered by the rupture of the levees that caused the drowning of the
city. The title indicates a focus shift away from the scientific investigation
into the Gulf hurricane disaster to the polemics aroused by the levees’
breach. Lee treats the rumors of sabotage that fuelled conspiracy theo-
ries as serious information by having experts comment on them, thus
weakening the documentary’s ability to unearth truth, but enhancing the
suspicious narratives shaped by survivors. Lee resorts to the techniques
of mock-documentary which, for films scholars Jane Roscoe and Craig
Hight, seek “to construct a particular relationship with factual discourse
which often involves a reflexive stance with regard to the documentary

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 The Making of Spike Lee’s Nonfiction Joints / 33

genre.”40 Conspiracy theory is evoked in the first episode of the series,

with Act 1 devoting only five minutes to the notion of conspiracy, yet the
questions raised cast doubt on the whole series’ power to grapple with
truth. Were the levees dynamited and the Lower Ninth Ward flooded “in
order to save some of the more expensive property in the lakefront area”
as suggested by Gina Montana recalling what happened during Hurricane
Betsy [WTLB, Act 1, 25:00]? The investigation discovers elements that can
only be interpreted in light of the theory presented: whether it exposes
the corruption of police officers stealing goods in a supermarket like other
looters or pinpoints the negative impact of budget cuts on New Orleans’
hurricane protection system, the film seems to trace the ramifications
of a larger conspiracy targeting the city’s African-American poor. Lee
exposes the underlying political and economic dynamics of a system that
sustains oppression in a documentary that explores the self-reflexive mode
to denounce political forgeries relating to Katrina.
The witnesses entertain doubts about the discourse produced by
political figures, suspecting the media of participating in a conspiracy of
silence: they believe that the levees were blown up and the Lower Ninth
Ward was sacrificed to save the touristic French quarter. Their testimo-
nies are crafted into a narrative that theorizes the breach of the levees
into a conspiracy, which Lee rationalizes by collecting scientific and his-
torical evidence. The film shifts from hearsay to conspiracy theory as
Lee uses editing to create an interpretive frame: witnesses retrospectively
tie together the events they remember, fashioning a narrative that aims
at revealing a form of order and structure to the failures of the levees
and floodwalls in and around New Orleans.41 The survivors’ search for a
rational explanation is signified by the words that crop up in their testi-
monies: Harry “Swamp Thang” Cook first depicts sounds in onomatopoe-
ias (“boom”) [WTLB, Act 1, 22:00], which Gina Montana then qualifies
as an “explosion” possibly due to an “electrical transformer, something
popping up in the distance” [WTLB, Act 1, 23:00]. The words are repeat-
ed in the mouths of witnesses (“boom, boom”) who recall they felt the
ground shake. Witnesses retrospectively identify the boom as the blast of
a bomb—Joycelin Moses heard echoes in the distance and so did Michael
Knight. The survivors are confident that they could sense the moment
when the levees were blown up—Audrey Mason confidently asserts that
she “felt the explosion” [WTLB, Act 1, 23:45].
The interviewees explain what they are convinced happened whereas
Lee turns the impressions collected into a system of beliefs that paradox-
ically undermines his attempt at clarifying the enigma. The characters

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envision different possibilities to account for the explosion heard: either

the levees gave and the water gushed through or a barge hit the levees and
provoked their collapse. Try as they might to connect events and causes
in meaningful order, they only expose the failings of the documentary
to approach the truth, blurring facts and fiction by prioritizing subjective
views.42 Truth just seems to vanish as more hypotheses are conjured up:
the more possibilities, the more confusion. The film edits different types
of footage into a semiotic chain that pinpoints conflicting views of the
situation: from the officials’ reassuring messages to the media’s sensation-
alized spectacle of disaster to the witnesses’ retrospective critical accounts,
the polyphonic web of voices compromises the coherence of the whole
narrative structure.
Commemorating the five-year anniversary of Katrina through two
episodes assessing the progress achieved since Katrina swept through New
Orleans and the Gulf Coast, If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise
further illustrates the self-reflexive dimension of Lee’s documentary film-
making. Aired on HBO on August 27 and 28, 2010, the two parts of the
film examine the policies that were enforced as regards reconstruction
programs, schools reopening, health structures, among others. New faces
crop up to address issues that have arisen since the immediate aftermath
of Katrina, which provided the focus of interest in the first season of what
might now be termed a series. Lee revisits the witnesses whose voices he
made familiar if not famous in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four
Acts, using some of the shots that have become iconic images for the fail-
ures of the government to cope with the situation. The two films complete
each other, articulating the dynamic relationship between the past (2005)
and the present (2010) through intertextuality, which demonstrates that
the civil rights fight is a continuous struggle that has not yet ended. The
themes broached, including access to education, emphasize the parallels
between the fights of the present and those of the past.
A compilation montage follows the prologue of If God Is Willing
[IGIS, Part 1, 01:54], creating a parallel with the credits to the third act of
When the Levees Broke [WTLB, Act 3, 00:40]. The same narrative structure
is replicated, plying between the same archival footage of New Orleans
landscape of rubble and broken houses and close or medium-close shots
of the film’s new participants, posing in front of backdrops that help char-
acterize their relationship to the city. The footage selected from When
the Levees Broke [WTLB, Act 1, 02:00; Act 3, 00:40] functions as self-ref-
erential devices prompting reflection on the highly symbolic images of
Katrina. The witnesses may have moved on, but archival footage depicts

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scenes of chaos that have not been forgotten: a crowd of hungry people
waits for help outside the Superdome and the Convention Center; a pile
of broken children’s bikes denotes the broken lives of as many families; a
naked black baby in diapers stands by a soldier’s gunpoint; an army hel-
icopter flies low, rescuing people from the flooded city; an empty school
bus lies crushed under the barge that notoriously hit the Industrial Canal
floodwall; graffiti on the walls say “Bush sucks. Where is FEMA!” and
spray-painted crosses indicate which houses have allegedly been searched
and how many corpses have been found inside—if any.
Only the characters presented in the credit sequence have changed:
new faces appear while others have grown older. The presence of Will
Chittenden and Kimberley Polk functions as narrative hooks, arousing
curiosity as to what their life has become since Katrina. Contrary to
When the Levees Broke, which showed many New Orleanians in exilic
environments rather than in their homes, If God Is Willing portrays most
participants in New Orleans. Cecile Tebo, NOPD Crisis Intervention Unit
Administrator, is filmed in her white uniform leaning on her service car
[IGIW, Part 1, 02:14]. Some backdrops do signify idiosyncratic views
of the city, displayed as a skyline on the horizon reflecting Dr Calvin
Mackie’s critical distance from the city [IGIW, Part 1, 02:16]. The water
has receded leaving but a cement block instead of a house, anticipating
the location chosen for Harry “Swamp Thang” Cook’s nostalgic interview
about the Lower Ninth Ward [IGIW, Part 1, 02:33]. The interviewees’
characterization contributes to fictionalizing the series, suggesting that
the five-year time gap between the two films has a lot to unveil. Public
figures appear alongside ordinary citizens: Michael Brown will be given
the opportunity to retrospectively comment on his decisions as FEMA
director; Brad Pitt has gotten involved in the reconstruction process;
Mitch Landrieu has risen to prominence by becoming the mayor of New
Orleans. Their faces are icons of the “new New Orleans” that has begun
to emerge, signifying a shift in politics since 2005.
Terence Blanchard’s score further creates musical continuity between
When the Levees Broke and If God Is Willing; his trumpet recalls the
tragedy in a few notes that immediately strike an emotional chord. The
musical and visual intertextual references ironically imply that progress
is slow to reach all the quarters of the city—even worse, some parts have
not been refurbished yet. The repetition of the same images is disturbing,
for it metaphorically suggests a state of paralysis that has made progress
impossible to achieve. Instead of moving forward as one could expect con-
sidering the time lapse between the two documentaries, the impression

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conveyed by the first images of the film evoke an all-too-present past.

These quotations from another film can also be understood as flashbacks,
which generate a sense of fatality and entrapment: houses are still crum-
bling as though the storm happened only a few months ago and people
have not yet returned to the ghost city.
The credits to the second part of If God Is Willing and Da Creek
Don’t Rise incorporate very few intertextual elements from When the Lev-
ees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts except for its elegiac score by Terence
Blanchard and the haunting image of a dead body floating in the “toxic
gumbo” as were dubbed the dirty waters drowning the city, carrying all
types of toxic waste from the surrounding factories. The British Petroleum
oil spill that struck Louisiana in 2010 is evoked through air photographs
of the endangered wetlands and a snapshot of cemetery crosses indicating
the names of all the endangered species of wildlife in the Gulf Coast area,
a still of Barack Obama crouching on the beach and footage of citizens
demonstrating their anger. The picture of the oil-soaked birds at the end
of the sequence symbolically announces a shift from race and politics to
environmental and economic concerns.
According to filmmaker and writer Sheila Curran Bernard, “docu-
mentaries should demand their [viewers’] active engagement, challenging
them to think about what they know, how they know it, and what more
they might want to learn.”43 Lee’s nonfiction films achieve this objective
through the polyphony of voices that intensifies the narratives’ multiple
layers of signification, allowing the director to shed light on some aspects
while omitting others. The collected testimonies inform the perspective
which he favors, conveying an insider’s point of view that focalizes on the
intimate experience of African Americans. The reflexive dimension of his
filmmaking is geared toward debunking stereotypes while promoting a
sense of collective identity and memory by retrieving hidden secrets and
refurbishing the images of possible role models among African-Amer-
ican iconic figures. The panel of interviewees and the presentation of
data collected demonstrate that Spike Lee belongs to this generation of
filmmakers who, Bill Nichols contends, are concerned with telling history
“from below, history as lived and experienced by ordinary people, rather
than history from above, based on the deeds of leaders and the knowledge
of experts.”44 The documentaries exploit the emotional appeal of memory
by crafting an intimate version of the past from a series of interviews
that tend to equal personal memories with historical truth. They depict
the racial context that underpinned African-Americans’ life experience in
the Southern states, including after Katrina’s devastating impact on New
Orleans, merging memory and history.

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 CHAPTER 2

History and Memory

The African American Experience

The role of historical films in the construction of collective memory has

been widely studied since French historian Marc Ferro posited that the
cinema represented a neglected source of knowledge. His seminal His-
tory and Cinema (1993) relates the cinematographic reading of history
with the historical reading of film, laying stress on the ideological and
economic constraints of the production context underlying the semiotic
construction of film. Marc Ferro contends that films are best approached
from a variety of viewpoints which help grasp the visible and the non-
visible that seeps into the film’s discourse, conveying either resistance
to or complacency with the dominant ideology. The reflexive work of
many filmmakers exploring the limits of genres, breaking the conventions
that rule representation, expresses a creative awareness that Marc Ferro
noted when writing that “thanks to popular memory and oral tradition,
the historian-filmmaker can give back to society a history it has been
deprived of by the institution of History.”1 The French critic invites us to
look beyond the frame of a film to understand how cultural politics shape
collective memory through contemporary cinema, constructing its histor-
ical discourse through the lens of the present. Not only do films enrich
the knowledge of the present by practicing a specific mode of writing
about the past, but they also provide a blurred window into the past by
preserving memory traces. This theoretical background undergirds my
approach to Lee’s historical perspective in documentaries that articulate
the dialectical relationship between the present and the past through the
interplay of archival documents and interviews. While his documentaries
delve into the past, using primary sources such as archival photographs to
further comprehension of the African-American experience, they are also

37

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active agents of memory culture putting forth some events and omitting
others.
The struggle for the civil rights is a recurring subject in Spike Lee’s
documentaries. From Four Little Girls to A Huey P. Newton Story to Jim
Brown: All American, the filmmaker understands the relation between
history and memory through the prism of race, underlining the role of
Black Nationalism in the construction of African-American historical
consciousness. Lee, however, has eschewed the brunt of criticism he bore
after making Malcolm X, whose memory he was accused of commodifying
and merchandising,2 by committing himself to documentaries that address
the lived experience of race. Prominent among these are the two televi-
sion series devoted to the reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane
Katrina’s destructive sweep across the Gulf Coast and the breach of the
levees which caused the Big Easy to flood, revealing the historical legacy
of race on the disproportionate number of African Americans among the
dead and the displaced. Although the documentaries play on the illusion
of a faithful rendering of history by incorporating the voices of experts
whose informed views reinforce the film’s overall demonstration, they
actively share in the construction of collective memory, highlighting the
sense of resilience among African-American ordinary citizens and the
determination of black nationalists.
When broaching historical subjects or reconstructing the narrative
of events that are deemed crucial for understanding the present, Spike Lee
partakes in the memory work which Pierre Nora defines as an artificial
construction and a self-conscious effort, observing that “the less memo-
ry is experienced from the inside the more it exists through its exterior
scaffolding and outward signs—hence the obsession with the archive that
marks our age, attempting at once the complete conservation of the pres-
ent as well as the total preservation of the past.”3 Based on the testimonies
of witnesses whose individual stories illuminate some unknown aspects of
history, the director’s documentaries participate in the construction of col-
lective memory, helping shape a sense of collective belonging by allowing
viewers to share in the past. According to art historian Alison Landsberg,
the technologies of mass culture spread memories to crossover audienc-
es—regardless of skin color, ethnic background, or gender.4 She develops
the concept of “prosthetic memory” that “emerges at the interface between
a person and a historical narrative about the past, at an experiential site
such as a movie theater or museum. [. . .] the person does not simply
apprehend a historical narrative but takes on a more personal, deeply felt
memory of a past event through which he or she did not live. The result-
ing prosthetic memory has the ability to shape that person’s subjectivity

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 History and Memory / 39

and politics.”5 Not only do films help preserve individual memories, which
cement the community around historical landmarks, but they also incite
people to appropriate and incorporate them into their own life narrative,
thus erasing the historical color line between black and white Americans.
Spike Lee’s documentaries contribute to this memory-sharing pro-
cess by retracing how African Americans went through pivotal historical
events like the civil rights fight. By interviewing witnesses who are willing
to testify in front of his camera, Lee gives meaning to archival footage and
allows untold stories to come forth. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem
in Four Acts illustrates this point as it foregrounds the specific historical
resonance of the moment when Katrina’s storm surge broke the levees sur-
rounding New Orleans. While addressing the plight of African Americans
trapped in the travails of destruction, Lee pinpoints the parallels between
the present and the past to suggest that discriminatory policies have not
disappeared and continue to produce feelings of victimization among
African Americans. Lee underlines how the combined notions of race
and class impact individual experiences of history, thus challenging the
addressed audience with alternative historical narratives. Appropriating
the documentary form to rewrite the narrative of the past and allowing
African Americans to testify about their own experiences of history, Spike
Lee broadens the viewers’ perspective on the roles of African Americans
in American society.
Following his discussion of the central function of narrative in the
construction of historical meaning,6 Paul Ricœur contends that narra-
tive configurations are ideological tools for the manipulation of mem-
ory, which implies an arbitrary process of selection between events to
be commemorated and others to be forgotten.7 Although the historian
emphasizes the fact that memory can be manipulated through narrative
configurations, which may deprive individual actors of their power to
recount their actions themselves, he also argues that narrative emplot-
ments can be used as a source of empowerment—which Marc Ferro
intimated through a different path of reasoning when evoking oral his-
tory as a possible primary source for the historical filmmaker. The lesson
provides a methodological frame to the analysis of Spike Lee’s historical
documentaries: while the past can be a site of contested memory over-
shadowing the present, the narrativization process can foster alternative
forms of historical understanding and help formulate challenging versions
of the past. Although Spike Lee’s historical nonfiction films further a crit-
ical stance as to the perception iconic images breed of specific historical
events, they articulate an awareness of films as tools of memory favoring
certain narrative configurations, which may generate distortions that need

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to be interrogated. Historian Paul Ricœur was concerned with “the com-

petition between memory and history, fidelity and truth,”8 which I argue
is of special relevance to Lee’s documentary filmmaking.

Family Recollections of Segregation

In his groundbreaking work On Collective Memory, Maurice Halbwachs

devotes a whole chapter to the notion of “the collective memory of the
family,” arguing that the remembrance of a single event may actually
encapsulate the summation of an entire period. Reading from Chateau-
briand’s record of family life in Mémoires d’outre tombe, in which the nar-
rator depicts the sequestered life of the nobles of the period, Halbwachs
is able to expand on the monotony of provincial existence.9 Although the
French philosopher and sociologist argues that family memories offer a
window into the collective past, considering that customs and traditions
culturally organize family life into rituals and social frameworks, he also
draws attention to the fact that “each family member recollects in his
own manner the common familial past,”10 thereby suggesting that memory
develops according to individual consciousness. In an attempt to challenge
the media discourse of the Civil Rights movement, Lee delves into the
past through the prism of individual memory, retrieving different versions
of the family stories which compose Four Little Girls.
The documentary discusses the history of segregation through the
lens of family memories, exploring how an event that became collective
memory affected individuals differently. Spike Lee draws an intimate por-
trayal of 1960s Birmingham through the stories collected from relatives
and friends of Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins,
and Denise McNair. The tragic deaths of the four teenagers made the
headlines as their torn corpses were recovered amid the rubble of the Six-
teenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The 1963 tragedy
is evoked as an event that marked the narrative of the civil rights fight,
underlining the director’s desire to use film as a tool of memory transmis-
sion from one generation to the next. Investigating among the witnesses
who open up in front of the camera, Lee’s filmmaking work parallels that
of a detective who endeavors to gather the missing pieces of a criminal
case. Lee’s film may have played a pivotal role in bringing about justice
considering the “four little girls” case had not yet been closed in 1997
when it was released. Even though Robert Chambliss had been convicted
and sentenced to life for the murders in 1977, other suspects were never

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 History and Memory / 41

worried by the prosecutors until Doug Jones was nominated as the United
States Attorney of the northern district of Alabama by President Clinton
on September 2, 1997. Jones pursued prosecution and secured murder
indictments against the two suspects still alive:11 twenty years after Robert
Chambliss was tried and declared guilty, newly discovered evidence led
the FBI and the Alabama police to reopen the case, causing Tom Blanton
and Bobby Frank Cherry to be indicted and sentenced to life in prison in
2001 and 2002, respectively. While these arrests are no doubt linked to a
mentality change, they may also reflect the impact of Four Little Girls as
the film helped raise awareness on the issue of racial injustice.12

Figure 2.1 Mrs Alpha Robertson shows a photo of her deceased daughter, Carol
Robertson, in Four Little Girls. The snapshot is used as a memory prompt, signify-
ing the mother’s nostalgic longing for the past. Courtesy of Photofest

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Walter Benjamin’s study of photographs draws from Halbwachs’s

sociological perspective when he observes that looking at the world
through the camera reveals more than expected: “Evidently a different
nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye—if only
because an unconsciously permeated space is substituted for a space con-
sciously explored by man.”13 Photographs capture an unconscious space
that preserves more than the moment photographed, revealing its social
organization as regards gender and class for example. Not only do candid
snapshots mimetically reflect an ideological organization embedded in the
image of the past, but they also engrave one’s relation to the photographed
subject, which accounts for the dual role of images used either as artifacts
in photo albums, permitting the construction of family memories, or as
icons of a collective past.
It is no surprise, then, that Four Little Girls includes a host of family
photographs to propel the narrative, illustrating both what is being said
by the interviewees and offering their own stories to the eye. Lee pieces
together the teenagers’ life stories from various archival footage, which
symbolically provides the backbone of an investigation that focuses on
intimate moments of family life, allowing us to grasp glimpses of the
social environment in which they grew up. Based on a series of interviews
with the deceased girls’ relatives, which complement the visual narrative
fashioned by the family album photographs, Four Little Girls is undergird-
ed by a twofold approach to the past: not only do the filmed witnesses
communicate a subjective recollection of a family story, but their narrat-
ed memories also immerse us in the past of a family life that bears the
imprint of a segregated society. The witnesses interviewed evoke their
family life in Birmingham, giving the viewer a glimpse of the constraints
the segregated city imposed on the family’s socialization experiences. They
recall vivid details that flesh out the characters of the missing girls and
help translate the psychological effects of enforced segregation.
Fleeting images of the teenagers’ childhood are integrated as a visual
backdrop into family members’ or friends’ testimonies, providing a ret-
rospective overview of family lives, moments of which were captured by
candid snapshots. A moving camera instills life in the still portraits of
Denise McNair, echoing the words used to characterize her. Her parents,
her aunt (Helen Pegues) and her neighbor (Queen Nunn) recollect some
of the girl’s habits, portraying her character as “aggressive,” “inquisitive,”
“caring,” and “friendly.” These comments invite us to take a second look
at the photographs of Denise McNair, which are stitched into the film’s
visual narrative as artifacts that need probing below the surface. The cam-

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 History and Memory / 43

era focalizes on photographic details, blurring the right-hand side of the

frame for example, to highlight some idiosyncratic attitudes of the girl—
including a smile or a gesture; still, it fails to recreate her body motions,
thus making her absence more acutely visible.
Susan Sontag contends that photography is an art that testifies to
time passing when she writes about the feelings that photographing a
subject may arouse. It is an act that confronts the fragility of life with
the immanence of death: “All photographs are memento mori. To take a
photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vul-
nerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it,
all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”14 While the photographs
of the deceased youngsters are presented as slices of the past and generate
a poetics of absence in Four Little Girls, the filmic montage disturbs the
“incitement to reverie”15 triggered by contemplation. The film does not
linger on the pathos which enshrouds the photographs of the dead, incor-
porating them in a chain of images that does not privilege one still over
another. Filmic movement transforms the meaning of still photographs
and transcends the nostalgic power of the photographic medium by turn-
ing it into a dynamics of time. The narrative crafted through the editing
of photographs points out the fact that the past encompasses stories that
need to be told. The interplay between the archival material and the inter-
views creates a dialectical relationship between the present and the past,
developing two narrative threads that endow the figures of the deceased
with mystery. The girls’ faces neither speak nor move, which heightens
an awareness of the discourse produced on them. The effect produced
challenges the viewer’s critical sense while disrupting the nostalgic feelings
aroused by still photographs that captured the girls’ camera poses.
The selected photographs compose a family album, shedding light on
family rites—including baby portraits, school photographs, family snap-
shots, birthday pictures, representing the fragments of lives that did not
blossom into adulthood. Siegfried Kracauer comprehends photographs as
“traces of the past” that lose their power to be understood once they are
disconnected from the moment when they were made; they alienate the
beholder because the camera mechanically retains elements that are shorn
of their significance in individual memory: “In a photograph, a person’s
history is buried as if under a layer of snow”16 he observes. Film counters
the reification process Kracauer identified by inserting the photographs
in a narrative that endows them with meaning. The act of filming may
draw attention to previously unseen details by lingering on a single shot
and panning various details in close-ups. The film introduces a duration

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effect, which vanishes in the frozen movement of the photographed sub-

jects, translating the rupture between the present and the past instead.
Spike Lee makes visible the distance between the present and the past
by filming the photographs and inserting them in a temporal sequence,
which enhances the chromatic change that has transformed the snapshots
and dramatizes the emotional tone that pervades the voices of parents and
friends disclosing their memories of the girls. The only photograph that
stands out in Four Little Girls is an enlarged black-and-white portrait of
Denise McNair, which is framed with golden wood and posted on the
livingroom wall behind her mother while she is being interviewed. The
portrait has a very specific place in the home, illustrating the symbolic val-
ue it acquired in relation to the story behind it: the girl’s father remembers
the moment when he shot that particular photograph, for Denise asked
him to use her little Brownie camera. Chris McNair recalls that “she was
sitting in the bed playing with her doll and said ‘Make a picture of me,
Daddy.’ ” The picture did not come out properly because he stood too close
to her and took it on the spur of the moment without bringing the care
he usually did to the mechanical process (including light, framing, and
composition). He was all the more stricken when he went back to the print
after his daughter died and stumbled upon a photograph that conveyed
more than the girl’s features, for it captured this moment of spontaneous
complicity shared with Denise: “When the film was developed I saw that
the negative was way over exposed and I never worried about it anymore
until after she died. And, I went back to the negative and I reduced it and
then made a print of it, and I realized what a jewel I had.” Chris McNair
had an epiphanic experience when he realized how good the photograph
turned out to be, echoing Roland Barthes’s intense emotional response
to a photograph of his late mother, which he explains provoked “a living
resurrection of the beloved face.”17 Barthes recounts that he reveled in the
discovery of a snapshot that gave a visual shape to his mental image of
his mother, perfectly coinciding with his memory of her:

Hence I was leafing through the photographs of my mother

according to an initiatic path which led me to that cry, the
end of all language: “There she is!”: first of all a few unworthy
pictures which gave me only her crudest identity, her legal
status; then certain more numerous photographs in which I
could read her “individual expression” (analogous photographs,
“likeness”); finally the Winter Garden photograph, in which I
do much more than recognize her (clumsy words); in which

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 History and Memory / 45

I discover her, a sudden awakening, outside of “likeness,” a

satory in which words fail, the rare, perhaps unique evidence
of the “So, yes, so much and more.”18

The print may have faded, but the emotions it arouses have not. As a
space-time marker, the photograph represents “an illogical conjunction
between the here-now and the there-then” according to Barthes,19 reviving
the pain of absence associated with the type of consciousness it provokes.
The photograph thus turns “the past into an object of tender regard,”20
which is symbolized by the central place it occupies in the home and the
fondness with which the father holds it on his laps when telling the story
of his taking it in Four Little Girls.
Although the film camera strives to replace the eye sweeping the
photograph with a glance, it fails to convey the intensity of the revelation
that only a loved one can sense. The filmed photographs may provoke
empathy on the part of the viewer; however, they do not awaken the same
intimate emotions as a personal snapshot might, capturing the familiar
features of a beloved figure. While personal photographs may trigger long
repressed feelings about the period they cover, leading to the return of the
repressed as illustrated by Barthes’s exploration of the photographed past
in Camera Lucida, the editing of Four Little Girls defuses the pathos of
the situation by consistently switching from the past to the present, thus
refusing to dwell on the nostalgic effect produced by stills that imprison
the girls in their youth. As suggested by Valerie Smith, editing draws
attention to the time gap between the events referred to in archival footage
and the present of the shooting:

The liberal use of family photographs interspersed with the

interview footage emphasizes the impact of time on the bodies
and faces of the witnesses. [. . .] Frequent off-center close-ups
zoom in on the young girls’ now middle-aged friends and sib-
lings. [. . .] The faces and bodies of their friends and relatives
thus underscore the fact that time is frozen for Addie Mae,
Cynthia, Carole and Denise, forever imprisoned on the image
of their childhood and adolescent photos.21

The present and the past are connected through cross-editing, high-
lighting either the dichotomy or the coherence between the two inter-
woven narrative threads: one is devoted to reconstructing the past with
archival material whereas the other conveys the retrospective, subjective

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perspective of the witnesses. While some of them have come to terms with
the pains caused by a history of racial violence, others are still shaken
by the traumatic memories epitomized by the iconic photographs of the
era. The photographs are not just to be gazed at, for the interviewees
speak over them, reconstructing the narrative behind them through sto-
ries that help make sense of them. Lee focalizes on photographs as though
he was digging up memories from the subconscious of his interviewees,
questioning Chris McNair about his feelings as a father whose self-image
was tarnished by the impossibility of addressing his daughter’s wishes in
a segregated society. His testimony illustrates that memories can help
fill in the gaps in the visual track, which does not encompass the whole
experience of life in the segregated South. The film intersperses personal
photographs retracing the girls’ individual stories with impersonal snap-
shots depicting segregated water fountains and signs (“No nigger here”)
that are nowhere to be seen in the family albums [09:00]. The visual
interstices between private and public photographs allude to all the unsaid
in the family’s history.
The interviewees confide memories which have left no visual
records, for segregationist symbols have been omitted from the family
portraits, which more often than not depict the characters against a blank
background. The girls may pose in disguise, but they are neither seen
mixing with white children nor photographed in public spaces—other
than in staged school photographs. There is no snapshot of a holiday
outside Birmingham, suggesting that the family lived a secluded life in
the black quarters of the city. Only the voices evoking the past and the
use of newsreel footage allow the viewer to imagine the context of the
girls’ childhood. The family albums illustrate a careful selection of imag-
es fashioning the narrative and the memory of family life by purposely
obstructing some events and privileging others. As Susan Sontag puts
it: “A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of
refusing it—by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by
converting experience into an image, a souvenir.”22 All references to seg-
regation are censored in the family albums, which replicate the idealized
model of the American family, emphasizing the fact that the girls lived
in a protective environment. The photograph of eleven-year-old Denise
McNair holding a poster that reads “Register to vote” conveys the stirrings
of her political awareness [47:20]; yet it was taken at home and not on
the street—suggesting demonstrating may have been an indoors game.
Lee’s camera zooms in on her blurry face whereas her mother recalls her
daughter’s accusatory questions on the reasons why she, as an adult, would

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 History and Memory / 47

not march. The visual and oral tracks combine and call attention to all the
unsaid in the film. The photographs seem to prompt a host of questions,
which pinpoint the limits of the film to address all the issues. American
film philosopher Stanley Cavell notes that the “screen works as much by
what it excludes as by what it includes, that it functions less to frame
than to mask.”23 The film constructs an incomplete narrative by focusing
on the family photographs, which illustrate the self-conscious selection
process implied in the making of a family album. While the families
disclosed part of their intimate life story to the filmmaker’s camera, they
also carefully arranged the artifacts they put on display, thereby posing
as a harmonious family despite the constraints endured under Jim Crow.
Significantly, Spike Lee appropriated the media label of Four Little
Girls to evoke a family story that provides a counterpoint to the imper-
sonal, sensational media accounts. Through a close examination of press
articles and photographs dating back to the 1950s and 60s, art historian
Martin A. Berger analyzes the negative framing of the media label, which
distorted the public’s perception of both the crime and the victims:

The often-repeated ‘four little girl’ mantra effectively erased the

part of the victims’ identity that made them targets in the first
place. In 1955, as in 1963, the media coverage of and white
reactions to the deaths of blacks strongly suggest that white
sympathy for victimized children masked a disinterest in the
suffering of blacks.24

The focus on the dead girls downplayed the systemic violence that pre-
vailed in Birmingham during the 1960s, triggering an emotional response
that drew attention away from the political demands of civil rights fighters
and the causes of suffering in the black community. While Four Little Girls
exploits the emotional appeal of the story by crafting an intimate version
of the civil rights fight, it also depicts the racial context that underpinned
African-Americans’ life experience in the Southern states, accounting for
the climactic violence of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing.
The viewer viscerally experiences the feelings of terror inspired by the
brutal repression that tore the city apart in the summer of 1963 as the
camera zooms in and out of photographs depicting raging dogs barking
and biting people lying on the ground, whipped by the water pressure
of the hydrants that had been turned on to contain the flood of demon-
strators defiantly marching through Kelly Ingram Park on May 3, 1963
[47:00]. The hectic montage of photographs and newsreel footage testifies

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to the trauma that past violence inflicted and that cannot be forgotten by
African Americans who confess the paralyzing fear that confined some
of them inside their homes at the time.
The film does not include outside elements about the families inter-
viewed, which film scholar Valerie Smith contends had an impact on
the significance of the film at the time of its release. She emphasizes the
central role of Chris McNair as “a symbol of the community’s ability
to heal and flourish even after traumatic loss” because he had achieved
political and professional success since his daughter’s death.25 The scholar
also refers to Chris McNair’s condemnation in a sewer bribery and cor-
ruption scandal in 2007, which according to her subsequently weakened
the demonstration of the film.26 Even though the film’s role in collec-
tive memory may have changed due to the credibility loss of the central
character, the individual trajectories of the participants do not affect the
historical narrative fashioned by the film, which relies on a challenging
combination of oral testimonies and visual archives.

Oral History and Public Memory

Four Little Girls stitches together oral testimonies that offer intimate
knowledge and individual insight into the daily experience of segregation.
The complex web of interviews collected and selected shapes the film nar-
rative, articulating a subjective perspective on the past or on the characters
it portrays. The confessed memories testify to different personal expe-
riences, which highlight various status levels between the people, often
linked to race and class issues. The contributors’ stories may even com-
plete or contradict each other, thus pointing out the subjects of contested
narratives. Four Little Girls provides a case in point as the film juxtaposes
private memories of segregation in counterpoint to statements of former
white officials, thus exploring the racial divide through the narrative of
the past. Cross-editing emphasizes the distance between the blacks’ and
the whites’ living conditions in Birmingham, which produce two distinct
narrative tracks that join and overlap in the iconic photographs of the Civ-
il Rights movement, testifying to the violent encounters between blacks
and whites. While these snapshots provide historical records of the civil
rights riots, they also represent the traces of a traumatic past for African
Americans who either attended the events or watched them on television
and read about in the printed press.
Historian Michael Frisch argues that interviews are primary sources
of information and can be used as “a powerful tool for discovering, explor-

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 History and Memory / 49

ing and evaluating the nature of the process of historical memory—how

people make sense of their past, how they connect individual experience
and its social context, how the past becomes part of the present, and how
people use it to interpret their lives and the world around them.”27 In
other words, filmmakers may use interviews to challenge some assump-
tions about the past, actually shedding light on the subjective dimension
of remembering the past: from the defense strategies Southern Chris-
tian Leadership Conference (SCLC) activists remember discussing and
even arguing about (such as the involvement of children in the marches
[44:00]) to memories of African-Americans citizens who testify about how
their everyday life was affected by the violence raging through Birming-
ham in the summer of 1963, Four Little Girls unfolds a multiple narrative
structure which emphasizes the bearing of one story over the other.
The filmmaker uses parallel editing to confront diverging memories
of the South and to underline the stark opposition between two ways of
life: Chris McNair expands on his painful experiences in Birmingham, a
segregated industrial city where his university degree was of little value,
which contrast with the happy memories the city inspires to former south-
ern segregationist Arthur Hanes, Jr., Robert Chambliss’s Defense Attor-
ney. The film cuts from one interview to the other in order to point out
the social distance between the two men, who did not go through the
same life experience although both lived in Birmingham: Arthur Hanes,
Jr., proudly recalls that the city provided a golden opportunity for the
barons who came from the north in the nineteenth century; yet African
Americans like Chris McNair did not enjoy the flamboyant career that
even working-class whites expected in the fifties as they flocked into the
so-called “magic city” [08:27]. The violent and racist acts originating in
the city’s labor force and rural background, mentioned by New York Times
Editor Howell Haines as distinctive features of Birmingham’s history, do
not mar the idyllic vision projected by Arthur Hanes, Jr. The informal
atmosphere generated by the family stage does not alleviate the tension
that pervades a dual narrative structure, recreating the oppressive feel-
ing of 1963 Birmingham and pointing out the fact that racist attitudes
endure. When Helen Hughes comments on the “ugly,” degrading behavior
of adults opening up fire hoses on children and Cynthia Wesley’s sister
remembers the “children being washed down the street,” the film cuts to
Judge Arthur Hanes who recalls he had to downplay the event in front
of New Jersey students and professors who were shocked to read about
such riots on the New York Times’ front page.28 This editing technique
reinforces a Manichean view of southern society, defined by the socioec-
onomic rift between black and white citizens.

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Lee lays stress on the image of Birmingham, portrayed as a dan-

gerous city from the African-American viewpoint: Reverend Wyatt Tee
Walker, former executive of the Southern Christian Leadership Con-
ference, refers to one black section of Birmingham as “Dynamite Hill”
because of the blast he heard on his first visit, targeting the houses of
black families living in a quarter that sparked envy among their white
counterparts [15:00]. Reverend Fred Shuttleworth comments on the
Klan-affiliated policeman who advised him to leave after his house was
blown up, owning up to the fact that the police would not ensure his
safety [15:54]. The commonplace conversations spotlight the devastating
impact of segregation on individual lives as the interviewees recall anec-
dotes that unveil the traumatic experiences of being black in a social-
ly discriminating environment. Maxine McNair picks up the narrative
thread to complete the story her husband is telling [10:40], conveying a
different snapshot of a situation, which she considers was less humiliating
for her than for Denise’s father. She casts an analytical glance back to the
past, articulating the view that segregation emasculated African-Ameri-
can males. Public places deprived black men of their dignity as explained
by Maxine McNair and later confessed by Chris McNair, who remembers
being barred from buying a sandwich which his daughter Denise naively
asked for in an all-white restaurant, thus alluding to the excruciating
humiliation he endured as a man and a father under Jim Crow.29 The
details of the story, which took place at Kress’s at Christmas time, give
us insight into the significance of segregation from the point of view
of an African-American family. Chris McNair cannot hide the pain he
felt when explaining to his daughter that “she couldn’t have a sandwich
because she was black,” failing as a father to spoil her. When Lee asks
about the girl’s reaction, Chris McNair painfully adds that it was as if
“a whole world of betrayal had fallen on her.” The interviews thus reveal
the imprints left by segregation and the wounds it opened, which have
neither healed nor been completely overcome.
Marc Bloch posits that “historical facts are, in essence, psycholog-
ical facts.”30 The film plies between personal memories of victimization
and footage of police repression to spotlight the violence of segregation
and its devastating impact on an individual, psychological level. Chris
McNair expresses contempt at the white community, whose members qui-
etly endorsed Eugene Bull Connor’s patrolling the streets on board his
threatening white tank, which he could not have done “without the nods
from the status quo people.” His remark is laden with irony, suggesting
that neither the Civil Rights Act of 1964 nor the efforts made to commem-

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orate the civil rights struggle have quelled his resentment [33:00].31 Seg-
regation was legitimized by institutional figures such as Governor George
Wallace, who publicly argued for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow,
segregation forever” in his inaugural address on January 14, 1963. Even
when he is interviewed thirty odd years later, seeking for “redemption”
as Maxine McNair puts it, he still embodies the old South, using his
African-American servant Ed as a ploy to make amends.
Testifying in front of the camera brings up memories which move
the interviewees, shattered by an overflow of emotion ranging from anger,
rage and rancor to pain and tears. Not only does the camera capture
these excessive responses in close-ups, but it also highlights the weight of
the past over the present, exposing the enduring effect of coercive prac-
tices developed during segregation. The interviewees’ silence emphasizes
the grasp of painful memories, symbolizing the point at which “memory
will not enter speech.”32 Media and cultural studies Susannah Radstone
connects the notion of memory with images, which may crop up in the
present and bring back repressed memories of trauma:

Memory, a way of thinking as figurative as it is literal, fuses the

imaginative world with everyday life, dramatizes and recreates
the past as it is retrieved. Most of what happens is forgotten, yet
nothing of past life perishes, Freud believes. Image, scene, or
other person is cannibalized, infused with primitive (infantile,
visceral) feeling, combined, condensed, and transposed and
might erupt in bodily feeling, dream or nightmare; meanings
transmute with ever retelling.33

Lee conveys the atmosphere of the civil rights struggle by filming moving
moments, when his interviewees are overwhelmed with feelings they obvi-
ously cannot repress, testifying to the memories of traumatic encounters
with segregationist violence. The involvement of the younger generation
in the Civil Rights movement did have an impact on family life, nurtur-
ing the fear that caused Barbara Nunn’s mother to dream about “blood
pouring out of that church.” A friend of Cynthia’s (Dr Freeman Hrabowki)
remembers being jailed along with hardened criminals for taking part
in the children’s marches [46:00] whereas Maxine McNair had to hide
her shame when Denise asked her why she would not join the marches
[48:00]. Even if she did support the cause, she was too afraid to risk being
jailed, as was Gwendolyn White [49:49]. Speaking about the past arouses
feelings and creates stories, which the camera records as oral history.

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The process of remembrance emphasizes the film’s reflexivity, turn-

ing the words into a narrative that makes private memories public his-
tory. Yet it also points to the limits of the film project, which endorses
a subjective view of the past, encompassed by the objects presented as
“souvenirs” of the girls—such as Carole Robertson’s sash and Bible, which
her mother kept as an affective symbol of the past, signifying the memory
of her daughter and her absence in Four Little Girls. While the trials may
have brought narrative closure to the tragic story of the “four little girls,”
the film may also have contributed to the healing process by allowing pri-
vate memories to become available to a wide audience, introducing new
perspectives on the larger historical framework. George Lipsitz defines
countermemory as “a way of remembering and forgetting that starts with
the local, the immediate, the personal.”34 Lee focuses on a microscopic
approach to history, delving into family memories to grasp the zeitgeist
of the civil rights fight. Such endeavor undergirds his documentary series
on post-Katrina New Orleans, thereby bringing to light some unknown
details about the events that unfolded in front of the cameras.

The Unofficial History of New Orleans

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts was first broadcast in
New Orleans on August 16, 2006, as a tribute to the victims of the floods
that followed Katrina’s destructive landfall on Louisiana and the breach
of the ill-maintained levees. The film was to be watched as a funeral
requiem, a musical offering dedicated to the dead who never received
proper burials, paving the way for the reconstruction of a community
shaken to its core. The series is composed of four one-hour episodes that
are dialectically constructed to posit a study of New Orleans social fabric
and racial inequalities as they are blatantly exposed by the accounts of
witnesses and experts. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
investigates New Orleanians’ experience of Hurricane Katrina and the
ensuing human catastrophe, as the authorities were slow to respond to
the needs of those left behind. Testimonies give us an inside view of the
events, which witnesses recall from their individual perspectives. Depend-
ing on where they lived and how much money they could garner at the
time of Katrina, the inhabitants did not go through the same ordeal. Of
special interest to Spike Lee is the social and racial background of the
city, which he metaphorically depicts by filming from above and from
street level, capturing a dual landscape: the dry areas around the Super-

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 History and Memory / 53

dome and the Convention Center are in stark contrast to the drowned
streets of the Lower Ninth Ward, where all geographical and national
landmarks vanished. The traces left by Katrina on the landscape testify
to the disparities between New Orleanians whose experience of Katrina
was shaped by two entwined factors: their social status and their home
location. In a sense, the social level of Lee’s interviewees can be assessed
through the landscape around them, displaying either the physical traces
of devastation or the sense of exilic displacement. Film and media scholar
Janet Walker points out that the testimonies metaphorically construct a
racial geography of a city which is “noticeably segregated by race and
income where middle and upper-middle class white residents [. . .] are
[. . .] nowhere to be seen.”35 While some residents had returned home only
a few weeks after the storm, others were still stuck in their FEMA trailers
or forced to remain in exile after six months. Lee underscores that recon-
struction was slow to reach all the quarters of the city by lingering on
the sights of debris-filled streets. Even though the Lower Ninth Ward and
the Lakefront area suffered equally severe damage, the progress achieved
in the two quarters was not identical over the same time period. Recon-
struction policies were guided by geographical priorities—that, however,
intertwine with race and class illustrating the legacy of the segregationist
past of the city.36 The value of property differs widely from one neighbor-
hood to the other, which had a direct impact on the priorities defined by
reconstruction policies.
Lee turns to historian John M. Barry, author of Rising Tide, The
Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, to decipher
black-and-white archival footage depicting flood victims, thus demon-
strating that the same events have just reiterated. New Orleans flood and
hurricane history unveils a pattern of discrimination against the poor,
which the following study pinpoints through a chronological approach:

In its 288-year history, New Orleans has had 27 major river

or hurricane-induced disasters at a rate of one about every 11
years. A pattern of three responses runs through that history.
After each event, the city rebuilt and often expanded, small
differences in elevation determined the location of the well-
to-do and the poor, and levees were rebuilt and often raised.
[. . .] Inequity in the location of neighborhoods and the
distribution of flooding burdens appears early. When levees
failed in 1816 and again in 1849, high water drove many of
the city’s poor, found in the lowest location, from their homes

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for up to a month. [. . .] In general, the poor remained in the

city and often occupied low areas vacated by those leaving for
the new suburbs.37

Quite surprisingly, natural disasters have recurrently hit the city and
prompted the same inefficient policies. Even though the authors of the
above-mentioned paper note that the poor have again and again been
victimized by the strategies developed on a local level, they fail to discuss
the relationship between race and poverty, which is endemic to the city
of New Orleans. John M. Barry is repeatedly interviewed in the film and
argues that the “similarities” between the 1927 flood and Katrina are dis-
turbing [WTLB, Act 1, 28:00].38 The levees were dynamited south of New
Orleans on April 29, 1927, to protect the economic assets of the city, yet
sacrificing the parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines.39 By having the
scholar speak about the 1927 flood in voice-over while the image track
cuts to some archival footage, thus adopting the argumentative techniques
of the expository mode,40 Lee lends credibility to the rumor that the poor
quarters of New Orleans were voluntarily flooded to protect the city’s
most attractive features (such as the French quarter) from being ruined.
Not only do the scientific grounds presented by the academic legitimize
the conspiracy theories argued for by eye-witnesses, but they further help
Lee articulate their worldview.41 When the decision to blow up the levees
was made in 1927, the governor of Louisiana responded to the pressure
of New Orleans’s powerful businessmen, creating a threat that still hangs
over the present.42 Legal scholar Mark Fenster contends that conspiracy
theory creates a dialectical relationship between power and the course
of history: 43

In this sense, the conspiracy narrative is a melding of fact and

fiction, and attempts to tell a particular kind of story about
the injustice of present conditions through reference to an
historical wrong turn initiated by a grand, conspiratorial crime
that is ongoing. Thus, most conspiracy narratives by definition
oppose, or at least question, the current distribution of power.44

The witnesses obviously express private anxieties through the narrative

they give shape to, dreading hidden dangers that are reminiscent of the
Jim Crow era with its stories of conspiratorial acts implying both “overt
and secret state-sponsored racial subordination.”45 The paranoia that
pervades the speculative narrative of conspiracy theory is given social

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 History and Memory / 55

and historical underpinning by Marc Morial, the former mayor of New

Orleans, who still wonders why no investigation was conducted to clear
up the rumors dating back to Hurricane Betsy in 1965: “It became almost
an article of faith with people in the community, that the 9th Ward flooded
because there was an intentional breach of the levee. It was never investi-
gated. It was neither proven nor disproven” [WTLB, Act 1, 26:00]. These
comments suggest that the lack of official recognition merely heightened
public anxiety, nurturing conspiracy theories that encompass an under-
ground plot or secret scheme according to Mark Fenster, who does treat
the subject as a serious issue, associating the notion of conspiracy with the
fear for “some kind of agency which is preventing us from discovering the
truth, from connecting events and causes in a correct manner.”46 Douglas
Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge,47 completes the historical portrait
of New Orleans drawn by the film with sociological remarks spotlighting
the racial dimension of the city’s geographic structure. He points out that
conspiracy theorizing is a mode of cognition, arguing that the past vic-
timizations of the black community have nurtured a feeling of insecurity
that may explain why “the urban myth that it [the levee] got dynamited”
prevails [WTLB, Act 1, 27:00].48
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts foregrounds the
echoes between the failures of the government to cope with the crisis
that unfolded in the days following the rupture of the levees and the
segregationist and discriminatory practices of the past: Lee consistently
highlights the parallels between the African-American diasporic expe-
rience and the treatment of African Americans in the wake of Katrina.
Some of his interviewees become his mouthpiece as they give vent to their
criticism: cultural studies scholar Michael Eric Dyson grants the evacu-
ation process a symbolical value as it re-enacted the traumatic dispersal
of the slaves. He observes the fact that “they [the authorities] were treat-
ing them like slaves in the ship. Families were being separated. Children
were being taken from their mothers and fathers. Those more weary and
those who were more likely to be vulnerable were separated from those
who were stronger . . . The separation of the evacuation where people
lost sight and lost sound and lost sense of their loved ones” [WTLB, Act
2, 53:00]. There was a police roadblock on the Gretna Bridge to Jefferson
Parish that was reminiscent of the confrontation between segregationists
and civil rights activists on Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1963 [WTLB, Act
2, 03:00]. The degrading comments made by President George W. Bush’s
mother who expressed her opinion that “so many of the people in the
arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is work-

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ing very well for them” [WTLB, Act 3, 20:00] as she visited the makeshift
camp in Reliant Park in Houston, Texas, resonated with racist views that
recalled the humiliations endured by the homeless blacks gathered in the
“concentration camps” set up after the 1927 flood to shelter “refugees.”49
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise further explores the issue of
police corruption as seven policemen were indicted for misconduct in the
days that followed Katrina. Henry Glover was shot when attempting to
cross the Danziger Bridge; the police officers involved in the case let him
bleed to death before they burnt his body in his car [IGIW, Part 2, 33:00].
Such examples of overt racism mar the New Orleans Police Department’s
reputation, fuelling distrust among African-American citizens, paving the
way for more theory conspiracies.
Lee dramatizes the documentary through editing snippets of the
witnesses’ statements together, thereby enhancing the emotion that per-
vades their testimonies and the shocking power of the scenes they recall
attending. Their voices convey the feeling of pain that does not seem
to have dwindled with the passing of time; medium shots preserve the
intimacy of the speakers who do not appear in close-ups while capturing
their dismay through body language. The recorded testimonies highlight
the “belated impact” of the events that continue to haunt them, which
trauma theorist Cathy Caruth links to the definition of post-traumatic
stress disorder:

The experience of trauma, the fact of latency, would thus seem to

consist, not in the forgetting of a reality that can hence be fully
known, but in an inherent latency within the experience itself.
The historical power of the trauma is not just that the experience
is repeated after its forgetting, but that it is only in and through
its inherent forgetting that it is first experienced at all.50

The documentary underlines the trauma of Katrina by linking media

images to archival footage, thereby suggesting that the visuals showing
the long wait of the people left behind revived previous wounds that did
not heal.
Oral history does not provide a relevant approach to the past for
historian Thomas Doherty who reproaches Lee with encouraging “the
babble, blathering, ranting, and raving” through the interviews he con-
ducted among New Orleanian residents in The Journal of American His-
tory.51 Lee may be accused of highlighting controversial statements when
broaching conspiracy theories and giving voice to Katrina’s survivors who

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 History and Memory / 57

vent their resentment against the authorities; their disparaging comments

are based on their intimate beliefs that the government’s failures laid bare
the extent of racial prejudice. Lee nonetheless exploits these statements
to indict official figures (Mayor Ray Nagin, Governor Kathleen Blanco,
President Georges W. Bush, FEMA director Michael Brown) for replicat-
ing the discriminatory practices of the past.
The wide array of testimonies collected for the documentary series
provides valuable sociological information as to how New Orleanians have
been going through Katrina’s devastation and the city’s reconstruction.
The collected interviews allow the director to fashion an informing his-
torical narrative that counters the media short-term and flagging interest
in the drama of Katrina. By interweaving history and memory through
the combination of archival footage and oral testimonies, When the Lev-
ees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts prompts the viewers to empathize
with the filmed subjects, who confide deeply felt anxieties in the face of
life-threatening events. They convey a subjective perspective on historical
events, which the film exploits to foster critiques of the political system,
whose perceived failures are interpreted in the light of past discriminatory
practices.

“Living History”: Private Photographs vs Iconic Images

Modeled on the compilation documentary, Spike Lee’s nonfiction films

shed new light on historical moments, which he investigates by searching
among scraps of both private and public life. The filmmaker strives to
recover a lost narrative about the African American experience, working
like a historian who looks for historical truth by digging through primary
documents.52 While the historian scholar plumbs the past though written
records and first-hand accounts (such as journals and official reports),
the historian filmmaker resorts to visual and oral sources without taking
into account the difference between private and public archival materi-
al: newsreel footage is challenged by eyewitnesses’ testimonies whereas
family photographs compete with iconic images. The historical value of
Lee’s documentaries is however limited by his desire to focus on African
Americans, which implies a selection among the documents he retains.
No objective rendering of the past should be expected from watching a
“Spike Lee Joint,” for the director is keen to highlight the practical impact
of race on everyday life. His nonfiction film projects are based on the
concept of “living history,” which Manning Marable defines as follows:

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Reconstructing the hidden, fragmented past of African Amer-

icans can be accomplished with a multidisciplinary method-
ology employing the tools of oral history, photography, film,
ethnography, and multimedia digital technology, an approach
I call “living history.”53

In his methodological conceptualization of “living history,” Marable posits

that history may be best mapped out through a diversity of approaches
that favor “interpreting its totality.”54 Marable advocates the integration
of material traditionally considered unreliable by historians—including
oral history and photography. However, recovering the silenced stories
of African Americans implies a different type of research.
Significantly, Lee’s documentaries engage with the concept of “living
history” by exploring the interstices between private photographs and
iconic images, interweaving interviews conducted among ordinary citizen
and political officials, whose views allow for a cross-examination of the
events depicted. Private memories complexify the narrative of the past or
the portrayal of public characters, enriching and challenging the notion
of public memory. Lee uses editing to pinpoint the semiotic gaps between
private photographs that convey ordinary moments in everyday family life
and iconic photographs that contribute to shaping the public perception
of headline events. The film enhances the distance between the visual
documents, crafting a double narrative of the stories they cover.
Interestingly, Four Little Girls cuts twice to the same lynching pho-
tograph depicting the corpse of a black man, his limbs hanging loose
from the rope tied around his neck amid a crowd of white men, dressed
in elegant suits as they pose proudly in front of the photographer, dis-
playing the dead man’s body as a hunting trophy [08:00]. The camera
zooms in and out whereas the musical score uses drumbeats to dramatize
the horror of the scene. The shredded corpse stands for the cruelty of a
coercive system, which perpetuated white domination in the South into
the twentieth century. The snapshots are presented as visual evidence of
the racist ideology and brutality that underpinned segregationist Birming-
ham: quick close-ups indict the complacent and complicit faces of the
white characters in the crowd, including a child who innocently gazes at
the camera, attending the hanging as a spectacle. In Regarding the Pain of
Others, Susan Sontag underlines that lynching photographs were staged to
implicate the viewers into the act of watching, which is disturbingly repli-
cated in the film. She explains: “The lynching pictures tell us about human
wickedness. About inhumanity. They force us to think about the extent of

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the evil unleashed specifically by racism. Intrinsic in the perpetration of

this evil is the shamelessness of photographing it . . . the display of these
pictures makes us spectators, too.”55 The still photographs inserted in Four
Little Girls produce a visual shock pointing out the denial in the voice
of Arthur Hanes Jr., whose comments are introduced in counterpoint to
the archival footage, epitomizing a state of “knowing-but-not-knowing”
in Freud’s words. Arthur Hanes, Jr., recalls the city as “a wonderful place
to live and raise a family” in the 1960s [08:33] whereas archival photo-
graphs display the vicious spectacle of lynching which most people prefer
not to remember—including Arthur Hanes, Jr., who portrays a colorblind
city. The film heightens the opposition between the archival photographs
and Hanes’s testimony, suggesting the man has not yet acknowledged the
African-American experience of lynching and continues to believe in the
superiority of the whites over the blacks. The mismatch between the visual
and oral tracks serves to reveal and to denounce the enduring threats of
racism. Film critic Christine Acham comments on the irony of the dual
construction, which both “questions the validity of Hanes’s comments”
and reminds viewers that “historical memory is not only subjective but
subject to revisions over time.”56
In her stimulating book dedicated to Imagery of Lynching: Black
Men, White Women, and the Mob, Dora Apel discusses the embarrass-
ment which viewing lynching photographs may cause, for they point to
the acts of torture behind the victimization and the objectification of the
black body:

When we look at lynching photographs today, we try not to see

them. Looking and seeing seem to implicate the viewer, how-
ever distanced and sympathetic, in the acts that turned human
beings into horribly shamed objects, as if viewing itself were
a form of aggression. Most of us would prefer not to look.57

These photographs build a narrative that explicitly indicts the agency of

white men, who staged their power through vicious and cruel mise en
scènes for their friends to revel in, simultaneously looking to intimidate
African Americans into subjecting themselves to coercion. As editor and
political activist, W. E. B. Du Bois repeatedly used the lynching pho-
tographs as evidence of danger and unremitting threat. He had some
of them published in the NAACP’s monthly magazine, The Crisis, in an
attempt to promote anti-lynching campaigns.58 By exhibiting lynching
imagery as visual reminders of racism, Lee posits that the prejudices of

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the past have neither disappeared nor lost influence over the present.
He remediates the lynching photographs to underline the threat of racial
violence posed by the Ku Klux Klan’s parades on the streets of 1960s
Birmingham—the archival pictures appear in counterpoint to each other,
pointing to the coercive power of the visuals used to enforce segregation
[08:00]. The sense of menace was still bearing on the minds of the Afri-
can Americans who gathered around the families during the funeral of
the “four little girls” after the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing.
When the television broadcast the images of many unidentified black
bodies lying dead on the streets of New Orleans after Katrina, it reac-
tivated the same visual regime of racism and provoked strong reactions
of rage and anger among African Americans. Illustrative of an enduring
racist legacy are the photographs of New Orleanian African-American
victims, which Lee includes in a musical sequence at the end of Act 2
in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Lee edits together
still photographs and film footage depicting straying bloated dead bodies,
scattered on the streets like house debris. Most of them are lying face
down on the ground or floating in the dirty water, which is evocative
of the ordeal individuals went through during the storm. Literary critic
Evie Shockley compares the situation in New Orleans with the crisis in
Iraq to underscore the hypervisibility of Katrina’s black corpses in oppo-
sition to “the contrasting prohibition on media images of the remains of
military personnel killed in Iraq,”59 suggesting that the families of fallen
soldiers were demonstrated more respect than those of the drowned in
New Orleans. The film’s tempo slows down to allow the viewers to gaze at
the still photographs of the dead, thus breaking with the pace of television
and opening up the wounds of memory. Lee accompanies the images
with a jazz requiem on the soundtrack, offering a symbolic funeral to
the corpses of men and women who died alone in the wake of Katrina.
The musical score transcends the spectacle of horror into a requiem, thus
reappropriating and remediating the images of the dead, which were per-
ceived as icons of racism by African-American viewers when they were
broadcast on television or published in the press. The visual treatment
of the black dead bodies resonated with the coercive use of images of
lynching, for the figures photographed were turned into objects to be
displaced. Visual culture scholar Nicole R. Fleetwood’s ironic statement
conveys the emotional shock produced by “visual media [which] exposed
bodies emoting, bodies suffering, bodies bloated and decaying, bodies—
live and dead—as obstacles to be removed so that ‘disaster capitalism’
could begin its work of rebuilding what has been described as a dead

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city.”60 The film actually offers the dead the funeral rites they were not
given, inviting the viewers to share in the film procession. Wynton Mar-
salis, jazz musician who sings a capella the lyrics of “St. James Infirmary”
during a sequence exclusively composed of still photographs, expresses
both the pain and the resilience of the characters trapped in the shots
[WTLB, Act 1, 39:00]. The photographs show single human figures wading
in the flooded streets whereas the voice-over dramatizes their plight and
isolation, singing a blues song whose lyrics tell the story of a dead one: “I
went down to St. James Infirmary. Saw my baby there. Stretched out on
a long white table. So cold, so sweet, so fair. Let her go, let her go. God
bless her. Wherever she may be. She can look this wide world over. But
she’ll never find a sweet man like me.” The words confer a tragic dignity
on the figures made prisoners of the water in the photographs. One of
them describes an African-American woman dressed in patterned African
garb in a flooded street, which connotes the conditions of so-called third
world cities—thus questioning the Americanness of New Orleans.
Through remediation and narrativization, Lee is able to counter the
reification process associated with the act of photographic mechanical
reproduction. Walter Benjamin interestingly argues that films challenge
the viewers’ perceptions, revealing new structures to the eye, endowing
the cinema with a revealing power that does not extend to photography.
Film cameras record movement, which makes viewers see what is other-
wise invisible to the eye:

By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden

details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus
under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the
one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which
rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an
immense and unexpected field of action. [. . .] With the close-
up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended.
The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more
precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals
entirely new structural formations of the subject.61

Such is the effect Lee obtains when panning over a photograph, which
he prompts the viewer to see from different angles. The credit sequence
of If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise [IGIW, Part 1, 04:52] ends
with two snapshots that appeared in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem
in Four Acts and have become iconic images since: one of them features

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a family of four pushing their way through the dark water, carrying back-
packs loaded with a few possessions saved from their drowned home. Lee
creates movement into the stills by digitally tampering with them: the
human figures seem to stand out from the frame, turning into three-di-
mensional shapes that, however, cannot escape their bleak environment.
This photograph and another one depicting an old black woman sitting
amid a crowd of tired faces, waiting for help outside the Convention
Center, symbolize the African Americans’ resentful experience of Katrina
and its aftermath. Literature and film scholar Anna Hartnell’s gaze was
drawn by the singular figure of this older woman wrapping herself in the
American flag:

It is hard not to read this image in the context of the wider

African American experience on US soil; the face that the
flag encircles captures a sense of misery that transcends its
immediate temporal and spatial location. [. . .] While the flag
apparently acts as a source of comfort for this woman sitting
outside New Orleans’ Convention Center, there is a deeper
sense that it also represents her source of pain. Perhaps even
more than the opening scene of Malcolm X, this photograph
strains, questions, and possibly severs the relationship between
blackness and the national cloth.62

Hartnell lays stress on the use of iconic photographs in the construction

of an ideological discourse that permeates Lee’s every camera movement.
Rather than foreground the historical discourse encapsulated in the archi-
val documents, Lee uses such cinematic techniques as editing and close-
ups to appropriate them in his own reasoning. They are incorporated as
arguments shaping the racial underpinning of his interpretational grid.
While discussing the indexical relationship of the documentary to
the real, Bill Nichols states that “the film as a whole will stand back
from being a pure document or transcription of these events to make a
comment on them, or to offer a perspective on them.”63 The iconic pho-
tographs selected by Spike Lee represent the moment when the images
of the past collide with the filmmaker’s perspective. His films produce a
critical discourse through the juxtaposition of various archival materials,
which question the ethics of media culture as well as his own.

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 CHAPTER 3

Media and Race

The memory of the twentieth century was fashioned by the media,

which recorded most watershed events that occurred in the world and
can provide archival footage to craft an illustrated, informative, histori-
cal narrative of the past. Lee’s nonfiction films interrogate the ideologi-
cal framework that underpins this narrative, offering stimulating insight
into the media politics of representation. The filmmaker displays an acute
awareness to his cultural environment and endorses the role of social and
cultural critic1 when broaching the notion of stereotypes. The remedia-
tion of television footage allows him to debunk the construction and the
representation of the racial subject in popular media while articulating a
critique of the political intent and content encapsulated by stereotypes.
Lee’s films ironically incorporate archival footage to question media biases,
using intertextuality to deconstruct and undermine the ideological con-
struct of African-American archetypes.
Underlining this strategy is the crucial role given to iconic photo-
graphs, which the media reproduce to convey the zeitgeist of a period.
In No Caption Needed, Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites argue
that the rhetorical appeal of iconic images gives meaning to the con-
cept of American democracy. From Dorothy Lange’s portrait of Migrant
Mother (1936), signifying the pressing need for social reforms which the
Roosevelt Administration strove to enforce, to Nick Ut’s photograph of
Accidental Napalm (1972), which visually shocked many Americans into
supporting the growing anti-war movement,2 the authors contend that
iconic photographs “activate emotional responses such as civic pride or
outrage that are overtly political, while others communicate feelings of
pleasure or pain that become complexly political as they are folded into
historical tableaus.”3 In other words, they analyze iconic photographs as
emotional constructs that equal spectatorship with citizenship. Their work

63

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provides a methodological framework for the analysis of iconic images,

which are remediated in Spike Lee’s documentaries. Interestingly, the film-
maker inserts many images to which the American viewers were repeat-
edly exposed, in order to spotlight the failings of visual democracy. Using
iconic photographs that were not included in the corpus of images select-
ed by Hariman and Lucaites, Lee sheds light on pictures that will not be
used to further the democratic debate beyond the color line, signifying
instead the limits of integration and assimilation. The photographs he
puts forth center on the black body, which will not be incorporated in
a colorblind reading of topical events. In an attempt to resist the com-
modification of the black body, Lee prompts his interviewees to publicly
recount their own stories, thereby turning his documentaries into tools
of empowerment for the African-American community.
They are participatory documentaries which, Bill Nicholls demon-
strates, intertwine the personal and the political to “yield representations
of the historical world from specific perspectives that are both contingent
and committed.”4 Taking advantage of this particular documentary mode,
Lee explores the dialectical relationship between the media representa-
tions of the past and the verbal accounts of witnesses recalling the same
events, fashioning a dual narrative that pinpoints media biases regarding
the portrayal of African Americans. Editing allows him to expose the racist
ideological spin that undermines the authenticity of news reports: drawing
attention to words and images that express a skewed perspective, his films
reveal the biases encompassed in the cultural construction of blackness.
Through the compilation montage, which juggles with a diversity of oral
and visual footage, Lee endeavors to make visible and reveal the prejudices
that most viewers may be unaware of. Film critic Richard Dyer notes that
“the multi-colouredness of whiteness secures white power by making it
hard, especially for white people and their media, to ‘see’ whiteness.”5 Dyer
argues that whiteness is conceived as norms through which to view the
world, making viewers blind to their own prejudiced approach. A close
examination of the narrative crafted by the media around such figures
as Jim Brown and Huey P. Newton enables Lee to identify the tropes
of such discursive practices in the mainstream media. Both the athlete
and the Black Panthers’ leader embodied a threatening hypersexual black
masculinity which, according to African-American studies scholar Cornel
West, expresses the “white fear of black sexuality.”6 While Jim Brown: All
American tackles the black athlete’s tales of success as a deceiving myth,
celebrating the alleged “natural” superior athletic capabilities of the black

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body instead of an individual achievement permitted by practice and dis-

cipline, A Huey P. Newton Story calls attention to the distance between
the Panthers’ community programs and their image in television archives,
pointing out the enduring power of racist stereotypes over the character-
ization of the black male body.
Media scholar Brian A. Monahan argues that the role of the media
has been transformed over the past thirty years by the development of
24-hour television news networks such as MSNBC and the Internet. News
workers have been driven away from long-standing values that used to
define the core of their profession, including “objectivity, public interest,
the pursuit of truth,”7 and encouraged to shape compelling stories into
“newsworthy” information that “make it sell.” The infotainment trend
leads them to prioritize highly dramatic and emotional news items that
include “stirring accounts, heartfelt moments, captivating images, har-
rowing encounters, and compelling characters.”8 News workers play up
the dramatic stories of news items through words, statistics and images
that sensationalize the events; they create plots and shape characters to
dramatize storylines. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
unveils the media’s slant on the crisis that developed after Katrina as
reporters and news presenters downplayed the humanity crisis unfolding
in the flooded city, focusing on the high rates of crime that signified a
shocking state of chaos instead.
Spike Lee’s documentaries build a critical discourse on the media,
embedding sequences which he strives to reveal as artificial construc-
tions producing what Jean Baudrillard defines as a “hyperreality,” the
nature of which is determined by large-scale corporations and their allied
government. Simulacra and Simulation argues that there is no objective
reality anymore, for it is a concept that has been fundamentally altered
by the emergence of a highly mediatized environment, marked by the
development of news cycles which include an endless list of updates and
events to be commented on. Baudrillard refers to various headline cas-
es to demonstrate that the media erase the distinction between a “real”
event and its mediated representations,9 which Spike Lee illustrates by
confronting media archival footage to witnesses’ testimonies, sometimes
completing the stories that were turned into “public drama” with a more
intimate version. Compared to the media footage he introduces, Lee slows
down the viewing experience by focalizing on his interviewees’ faces and
inserting still photographs that prompt a contemplative gaze—instead of
a voyeuristic impulse.

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Deconstructing the Media Spectacle of Hurricane Katrina

Spike Lee examines the media representations of Hurricane Katrina in a

compilation film that questions the ideological frame of television report-
ers and presenters by producing a dialogical narrative around a selection
of archival footage, which he prompts the audience to review from a
retrospective, informed standpoint. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in
Four Acts is thematically constructed, thus grasping the numerous con-
notations which the reference to Katrina carries with it. The authors of
Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in New Orleans explain that the
phrase “Hurricane Katrina” has become synonymous with an array of
issues that stretch beyond the natural catastrophe to include its political
and socioeconomic consequences:

The mention of Hurricane Katrina conjures up more than just

a violent storm that unleashed nature’s destructive force on
an American city. Hurricane Katrina is now also recalled as
a political event that issued a black mark on a presidency, an
epic media story that produced collective trauma far beyond
those physically affected, a breakdown of order that shredded
the American social fabric (as demonstrated by the divergent
reactions of black and white Americans) and an economic
calamity that has produced one of the most dramatic urban
transformations in modern times.10

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts points to Katrina as

the signifier of economic developments that disregarded local geography
and the necessary preservation of the wetlands around New Orleans; it
reveals the wave of gang violence that followed the hurricane as a sign
of extreme poverty, resulting from the relationship between poor edu-
cation and crime; it demonstrates that the slow reconstruction of New
Orleans was first due to land-hungry promoters and corrupt insurance
companies. Lee highlights images that never reached the news media,
aiming to expose media collusion with power. By examining the media
footage of Katrina that he remediates in his narrative, he sheds light on
the confusion that permeated all media and political accounts as the hur-
ricane was approaching the Gulf coast, sending contradictory messages
to a population that was left to cope on its own.
Lee selected television news extracts that illustrate how the media
exploited the crisis that unfolded in New Orleans to produce dramatic

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narratives. When looking back at the unfolding events on screen, Lee is

able to identify the elements of an unstable discourse: rather than put
across a warning message, the media and the political officials bred con-
fusion by divulging inconsistent information. The opening sequence cuts
from Mayor Nagin’s address to a Congress Hearing (December 2005),
during which he emphatically claimed to speak on behalf of all Hurricane
Katrina’s survivors, to Michael Brown’s promises made during an inter-
view with Betty Nguyen on CNN, dating back to August 28, 2005, the
day before Katrina hit: “We’re ready, we’re going to respond [. . .] We’re
going to do whatever it takes to help the victims” [05:00]. Both versions
of the events contrast with the eyewitnesses’ narratives, conveying the
distance of these official figures from street level people. These public
statements suggest that the story of Katrina was a disputed subject before
the storm hit and has remained a bone of contention since. Instead of
moving forward, the narrative goes backward with Brendan Loy reading
out loud from his blog entry on August 26, 2006: “At the risk of being
alarmist, we could be 3 or 4 days away from an unprecedented cataclysm
that could kill as many as 100,000 people in New Orleans. Such a scenario
is unlikely. The conditions would have to be just right . . . or rather just
wrong” [05:22]. Young Brendan Loy appears on screen, a second-year law
student recalling the warnings issued by meteorologists:

There were forecasters out there, there were legitimate meteor-

ologists who were saying “This is a threat.” And the National
Hurricane Center was saying there’s a wide range of area
that could be hit by this hurricane, ranging from the Florida
panhandle all the way over to Louisiana. So New Orleans was
within their strike target.

Editing emphasizes the contrast between Brendan Loy and Mayor Ray
Nagin, opposing the young man’s rational statements to the public author-
ities’ lack of preparation.
The film then cuts to Phyllis Montana-Leblanc as she recalls that
she first heard that Katrina had been designated as a threat on August 26.
Her interview is part of a re-enactment since she speaks from Armstrong
airport, where she found herself stranded like many other New Orleani-
ans after the city flooded. A few close-ups on newspapers’ headlines are
interspersed with more interviews: Dr. Calvin Mackee remembers that he
urged his family to leave when Katrina was classified into a Category Five
hurricane; New Orleans former mayor Marc Morial explains that he was

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attending a funeral when the news was issued; Will Chittenden recalls he
had his family evacuate their Metairie home on the morning of August
28; actor Wendell Pierce was visiting his parents when the exodus started
and decided to stay; Michael Seeling preferred not to leave his uptown
house which he had not boarded up in time; musician Donald Harrison
did not evacuate because his mother-in-law believed Katrina could not
be worse than Hurricane Betsy which she weathered in 1955; Herbert
Freeman, Jr., stayed with his mother in Central City as the two were not
afraid of another storm. Both Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen
Babineaux Blanco are interviewed on the same studio stage as the previ-
ously mentioned ordinary citizens, recalling they took the first steps in
planning evacuation on August 26. However, no official announcement
had been made at the time nor a state of emergency officially declared.
This web of interviews is opposed to newsreel footage retracing the
growth of Katrina into an increasingly threatening menace. The archi-
val shots point to the spectacle provided by evacuation scenes with cars
queuing on the flooded streets of Florida. Although the news depicted
trees bending in the wind and the voice-over announced Katrina had
already caused six deaths on her path, television presenters downplayed
the danger for New Orleans considering there was but a “possibility of
this storm shifting further west” [WTLB, Act 1, 09:08]. As the narrative
unfolds and Mayor Ray Nagin was once more interviewed about man-
datory evacuation, the viewer can only be struck by the gap between his
retrospective statement and his speaking live on television on August 27,
when he declared that “we should take heed to it.” Never did he mention
mandatory evacuation in public before August 28 when it was already too
late for many to leave. Nor did he organize evacuation for the carless in
New Orleans, which could have been done in the “eight-hour window”
between Saturday 28 and Sunday 29—according to another interview he
gives in If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise. The archival footage is
used in counterpoint to the mayor’s retrospective narrative, highlighting
the inconsistency of his position. The film thus proffers an accusation
against his lack of leadership, using a diversity of newsreel footage as
proof of his weak and ineffective planning.
Lee points to contradictory statements that generated a sense of
confusion as to the right path of action: the threat posed by Hurricane
Katrina was minimized until it was all of a sudden dubbed a “monster
of a storm” and became breaking news on CNN on August 28 [WTLB,
Act 1, 13:02]. Brendan Loy’s Internet blog record entries mentioned above
testify to an awareness of danger forewarnings that strangely contrasts

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with the euphemisms in public discourse; the lack of visible public action
may have deterred many from leaving. The documentary questions the
responsibilities of both the media and the city representatives through
a dialectical construction that opposes personal memories to public
statements in a narrative that pits the isolated individuals against the
political body. This dichotomy underpins the film’s progress as the news
extracts are interwoven with eyewitnesses’ pictorial and oral accounts,
thus exploring contrasting tones and voices that dramatize this nonfiction
film. Editing further highlights the gap between the testimonies collect-
ed, which expose the socioeconomic rift between New Orleanians: some
explain they couldn’t afford to leave, whereas others decided they could
not withstand the storm because they had not stored enough groceries
for the days to come. Some sheltered in the hotels located on higher
ground in the city center, whereas others started to queue to enter the
Superdome. The storm triggered various responses which demonstrate a
lack of coordination that resulted in the chaotic situation that followed.
Lee focuses on themes that allow him to depict situations which
reveal “the color line”—defined by W. E. B. Du Bois as the problem of the
twentieth century at the outset of The Souls of Black Folk.11 He uses editing
to demonstrate that much of the media coverage after Hurricane Katrina
adopted a “blame the victim” posture and passed negative judgment on
these families that did not evacuate before the storm. Psychologist Nancy
Boyd-Franklin also underscores the negative framing that pervaded press
and television reports; those who remained behind were accused of irre-
sponsibility in failing to take mandatory evacuation as a serious warning.
The facts that most of them were trapped because they were unable to
stretch over their monthly budget as the end of the month approached
and that no transportation had been made available to facilitate their
evacuation was never disputed on screen. Lost in the media coverage was
the determination and resilience of the survivors, particularly those who
stayed behind to defend their homes or to care for elderly relatives who
were unable to leave.12 Television revealed an extreme state of destitution
among poor African Americans who were abandoned without food or
water on the interstate highways, outside the Convention Center, and in
the Superdome, shocking viewers who vicariously experienced the situa-
tion as an example of blatant racism. Although Lee does not put forward
the survivors’ social background as their main motive for staying in New
Orleans, much archival footage testifies to the level of poverty in New
Orleans. Sociological studies highlighted the social and racial dimension
of the humanitarian crisis:

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Of the 270,000 Katrina survivors stuck in New Orleans, 93

percent were black. And those left behind shared character-
istics that are often unevenly distributed by race. They were
predominantly poor and unskilled: 77 percent had a high school
education or less, 68 percent had neither money in the bank
nor a useable credit card, and 57 percent had total household
incomes of less than $20,000 per year. Poverty is one of the
major reasons why many of the evacuees did not manage to
leave before the storm [. . .]. 55 percent had no car or other
way to evacuate.13

The black underclass became visible through the gaze of the media, which
recorded the unending wait for relief around the Superdome and the Con-
vention Center. Although When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
includes media footage of the Superdome, the voices of the black under-
class seem to be missing from Lee’s narrative. In an attempt to debunk the
myth of the underclass, Lee interviews survivors whose social profile does
not fit the stereotype and underscores the status of homeowners among
the black residents in the Lower Ninth Ward. The interviews conducted
with African American New Orleans residents, many of them located
in the middle-class quarter of Gentilly, portray individuals who do not
correspond to the image of the “underclass” popularized by the media.
Sociologists James Jennings and Louis Jushnick note that the word stig-
matizes the poor, detracting attention from wealth inequality to focus
instead on personal failure—including a lack of work ethic and a sense
of personal responsibility:

The portrait of the underclass, a pejorative term used by con-

servatives and liberals alike, has been created as another myth
to prove the deleterious consequences of programs that benefit
the poor, thereby justifying policies of policing and contain-
ment and reminding good, normal, hard-working middle-class
citizens that they have nothing in common with “them.”14

While much of media attention on African Americans was on the black

poor,15 reinforcing entrenched views about dependency culture, When
the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts recycles the images of Katrina
to foster critical distance towards the ideological stance of the media as
regards racial issues. Not only does Lee spotlight the experience of Afri-
can-American homeowners to counter the prejudiced view, but he also

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 Media and Race / 71

endeavors to represent racial diversity among the residents he visits: the

poor are either black or white whereas African Americans are homeown-
ers or middle-class citizens.
Lee dwells on the controversy over the slanted portrayal of race on
American television by inserting BBC news footage [WTLB, Act 1, 55:00;
Act 2, 02:00], providing proof that foreign journalists were more daring
when they investigated the devastation and recorded stories that never hit
the American headlines. While the BBC highlighted the race and class
issue when identifying the poor who were barred from entering Jefferson
Parish as members of the underclass [WTLB, Act 2, 02:55], the situation
hit American media headlines through the focus on uncontrolled crimes
that were rumored to be going on—including alleged cases of rapes. The
gap between the American presenters in search of breaking news and
the BBC’s on-the-spot reporting style becomes all the more cruel and
shameful as the British crews of journalists are shown rescuing children
whom nobody had visited since their mother died [WTLB, Act 1, 55:00]
or taking part in a helicopter rescue operation [WTLB, Act 2, 07:00]. On
the commentary soundtrack of the DVD, Lee overtly wonders “Why is
this story on BBC? You weren’t seeing this here in the States!” However,
Lee explicitly chose not to mention the fact that American reporters also
took part in rescue operations—as explained here by historian Doug-
las Brinkley in The Great Deluge, which provides a testimony about his
experience of Katrina as a resident of the city where he was working at
the time:

Whether it was handing out pallets of water, rescuing people

out of floodwaters, or finding rides out of New Orleans for
the sick, reporters joined the effort to help. Not only did they
bring international attention to the Great Deluge via newspaper
dispatches and television reports, but they goaded city, state,
and federal responders to do more.16

NBC news reporter Tony Zumbado was the first journalist to venture
into the Convention Center, investigating a situation that had not yet
been reported to any authority. Although his footage is incorporated in
the film’s narrative, its source is not identified. Tony Zumbado provided
indicting statements against the authorities’ incompetence while walk-
ing among the people whose desperate situation and tears of shame he
brought to the television screens: “I can’t put into words the amount of
destruction that is in the city and how these people are coping. They are

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just left behind. There is nothing offered to them. No water, no ice, no

C-ration, nothing for the last four days . . . Somebody needs to come
down with a lot of food and water.”17 His comments however are cut from
the film, which points to Lee’s biases toward American media: Lee uses
cross-editing to contrast the dramatized commitment of a British reporter
who expresses dismay at the scene of chaos unfolding around him—police
officers trying to arrest a looter block the road ahead whereas poor peo-
ple sit in a derelict street waiting for help behind him [WTLB, Act 1,
01:00:00]—with the cold detachment conveyed by the staged interview
of Times-Picayune journalist Brian Thevenot, pondering over the type of
objects looters tried to steal, thus pushing the issue beyond the limits of
a humanitarian crisis into the field of law and order. The sequences are
juxtaposed so as to spotlight the biases of American television presenters
and news programs.18
Not only does Lee aim to demonstrate through the compilation of
various documents that the media misrepresented New Orleans African
Americans, but he also argues that racism was behind the slow response
of the government.19 He hammers home this point by having rap singer
Kanye West explain his sudden accusation that “George W. Bush doesn’t
care about black people,” breaking with the bounds of decorum during
a live television program [WTLB, Act 3, 10:00]. He also has CNN jour-
nalist Soledad O’Brien repeat and comment on what she told Michael
Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, during
a television interview that is embedded in her own interview with Lee
[WTLB, Act 2, 19:00]. Such a mise-en-abyme generates a critical distance
with the events reported, pointing out Michael Brown’s inefficiencies and
contradictions in the interviews he gave to the press: the promises he
made prior to Katrina [WTLB, Act 1, 05:00] are pitted against his mis-
management of the crisis when he publicly owned up to discovering the
dire situation at the Convention Center, where as many as 20,000 people
were stranded, five days after the levees’ breach [WTLB, Act 2, 19:00]. Lee
disrespectfully repeats the same images of George W. Bush congratulating
Michael Brown for doing a “heck of a job” [WTLB, Act 2, 17:00], thereby
conveying the shock he feels at the sense of self-satisfaction expressed by
the nation’s leader. The film shows the same three-second sequence three
times in a row, thus accusing the president of wilfully misreading the facts.
This was an embarrassing moment for Michael Brown as he confides in
the sequel to the film.
Katrina was a traumatic event for African Americans who felt dis-
empowered and disenfranchised as the days went by and no help was

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 Media and Race / 73

coming in. Lee allows the survivors to shape their own experiences in a
collective narrative that helps them transcend the status of being a victim.
Not only do they resist the media’s commodifying gaze by bearing witness
in front of the camera, but they also reclaim space by speaking out from
New Orleans.20 Editing provides the link between the testimonies deliv-
ered by the “talking heads” and the traumatic memories shattering their
lives as the film cuts abruptly from outdoor images of the rain petering
the deserted streets to close shots of witnesses embodying the ordeal of
surviving Katrina and its aftermath. Fleeting images of flooding denote
the enduring memories of fear that left most of them traumatized [Act
1, 21:00].
Sociologists Dynes and Rodriguez explain that “television construct-
ed the frame of meaning to which audiences and decision makers came to
understand Katrina.”21 The media framing of the crisis shocked many Afri-
can-American viewers who felt that the television spectacle was imbued
with racist overtones. Lee aims to convey their viewpoint as he lets Gina
Montana recall the humiliation and the pain she vicariously endured when
watching the news: she saw human beings “treated like animals” [WTLB,
Act 2, 56:39] and for African Americans across the nation, the public
display of neglect was rooted in racism. While African Americans were
objectified in the gaze of the media, Lee’s camera provides the attention
needed to restore their humanity, allowing them to publicly express their
feelings. The African-American survivors articulate a vision grounded in
the dehumanizing experiences their ancestors had gone through. The
psychological trauma of slavery was reactivated by a series of events that
recalled past inhumanities in the antebellum South. Not only were African
Americans deprived of their citizenship, but the treatment they received
during evacuation also prompted parallels with the stories of oppression
and struggle exposed by slave narratives. The director emphasizes the
parallels between the management failures at every level of government,
including the uncoordinated rescue effort in the face of an unprecedented
humanitarian crisis, and the segregationist discriminatory practices of the
past: the similarities between the African-American Diaspora experience
and the treatment of African Americans in the wake of Katrina are illus-
trated by visuals that aim to shock the viewer.
Lee overtly compares the stranded victims of New Orleans with
the slaves who had not fled the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in
Pompeii [WTLB, Act 1, 40:00]. His use of montage is undergirded by
arguments that lay bare racial prejudice and injustice: still shots depicting
African Americans wading through the flood are contrastingly followed

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by the testimony of a white citizen (Charles McHale) uninterestedly stat-

ing that he heard of the devastation in New Orleans after he returned
from visiting the ruins of Pompeii. Lee ironically cuts to photographs of
ash-coated Pompeii corpses, whose rigid position further dramatizes the
images of stray waterlogged bodies bespeaking vulnerability and trauma
in New Orleans. In his book Come Hell or High Water, Hurricane Katrina
and the Color of Disaster, culture critic Michael Eric Dyson also refers to
Pompeii to underline the socioeconomic structure that both the archae-
ological site and flooded New Orleans symbolize. Rather than framing
looting in terms of law and order, he suggests that the poor reacted like
the Italian slaves who wanted to experience their owners’ luxury before
dying:

The way it was for the poor of Pompeii is the way it was for
the poor citizens of New Orleans. [. . .] The tragic replay in
New Orleans on August 29 is unmistakable as city elites and the
well to do fled without thought of their poor citizen-servants.
And many of the slaves in Pompeii were found with grand
and expensive items, things they wouldn’t ordinarily possess
but that they took nonetheless, knowing they couldn’t make
use of them during disaster but wanting to feel what it was
like to have nice things, if only for a few fleeting, fatal hours.22

These comments prompt the viewers to take an analytical look at the

images of despair they are watching as they arouse an awareness of desen-
sitization through media exposure: Lee intimates that viewers are gazing
at the suffering in New Orleans just as the tourists contemplate the plaster
cast of the bodies of people buried alive by the Vesuvius ash fall. The news
personalized the characters interviewed to cultivate emotion; neither did
the short-term media focus on breaking news items allow the survivors to
relate their complete story, not did it provide an overview of the events.
The documentary includes an embedded television sequence about Katy,
who was evacuated to Utah while her children were sent to another state;
her story was shaped into public drama on television. The media footage
introduced writes her tragic adventure with a happy ending, for Katy and
her family were reunited in Pleasant Grove where they were invited to
stay by the local community. The media spin on their story minimizes the
trauma of displacement and echoes the president’s mother’s opinion that
“this is working very well for them”—a comment she made when visiting
evacuees in Reliant Park in Houston [WTLB, Act 3, 05:00]. Lee revisited

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Katy five years later during the shooting of If God Is Willing and Da Creek
Don’t Rise: she had by then returned to New Orleans and retrospectively
confessed that she had never felt part of the white community in Pleas-
ant Grove. The experience even increased the trauma of displacement as
she could relate to no familiar faces in the all-white neighborhood. Katy
explains she felt estranged from the people around her and had to settle
back in New Orleans to overcome her depression.23 Like other displaced
individuals in the wake of Katrina, Katy was deprived of all geographical
and psychological landmarks, which annihilated her power to act and to
decide for herself what she should do to recover from the shock of losing
all her possessions. Displacement was therefore a trauma added to that of
destruction, which the media made even worse by dubbing the displaced
New Orleanians “refugees.”
Lee calls attention to the impact of the word “refugee” that was
used repeatedly across the media, thus once again identifying tropes of
racism which many white viewers may have not noticed. The word fue-
led resentment among interviewees who vent their anger on screen: they
were being discriminated against when treated as foreigners. The director
underlines the polarizing use of language in the media through the inter-
view of Gralen B. Banks which is intercut with extracts from news reports
about the so-called “refugees,” suggesting the images deprived him and
other African Americans of a voice: “They were referring to people leav-
ing New Orleans—they were refugees. Damn . . . When the storm came
in, it blew away our citizenship too? [. . .] We weren’t American citizens
anymore? [. . .] I thought that was folks that didn’t have a country, that
didn’t have anywhere” [Act 3, 21:08]. Spike Lee examines the vocabulary
that cropped up in the media discourse; such words as “evacuees, vic-
tims, displaced, refugees, survivors” were recurrent, all of which resonate
with racial overtones according to linguist Geoffrey Nunberg. The author
famously compared the captions of two press photographs to pinpoint the
racist bias of the mainstream media:

One placed a young black man carrying a bag of food in

chest-deep water with a caption that described him as looting;
another showed a fair-skinned couple in identical circumstances
and described them as “finding food at a local grocery store.”24

The crisis was framed in moral terms, denying the fact that no other
solution but looting was available to the people stranded in New Orleans
without food or water. Much of the media highlighted the rate of crime in

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New Orleans with an emphasis on violence [WTLB, Act 3, 06:00, 28:00],

spreading out to the cities where the inhabitants had been dispersed.
Many African Americans felt that their status as full-fledged American
citizens was infringed upon during Katrina, which Lee enhances by con-
fronting various types of archival footage.
Through the manipulation of archival footage drawn mainly from
television news programs, Lee produces a politically reflexive documenta-
ry that levels criticism at the media spin on Katrina. Lee demonstrates that
Katrina was a “media event” which media scholar John Fiske defines as:

An indication that in a postmodern world we can no longer

rely on a stable relationship or clear distinction between a
“real” event and its mediated representation. Consequently,
we can no longer work with the ideas that the “real” is more
important, significant, or even “true” than the representation.
A media event, then, is not a mere representation of what
happened, but it has its own reality.25

Fiske suggests that a “media event” does not relate to the truth, for it pro-
duces its own images and discourse. African Americans did not connect
to the images which portrayed them on screen. Lee calls attention to the
distance between the media event and the African-American experience
by confronting television extracts with the memories related by witnesses.
Not only does he expose the racial bias that undergirded mainstream
media reports, but his reframing of the events in the documentary makes
visible his skewed perspective. While striving to convey the traumatizing
experience of Katrina and its aftermath for African Americans trapped in
the drowning city, Spike Lee recovers documents that provide supporting
evidence to his version of Katrina.

Stereotyping Black Crime on Screen

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts presents Katrina as a

television spectacle which reinforced racist stereotypes by spreading word
that the city was rampaged by looters—all of them viewed as African
American gangsters. Rather than focus on the reasons why some New
Orleanians made the decision to withstand the hurricane, media discus-
sion emphasized the wave of violent crime raging across the city, fore-
grounding the rumors of violence perpetrated by looters and isolated

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snipers. Lee’s reflexive approach to media rhetoric implies a critique of

television culture, which has become a staple of contemporary documen-
tary26—including Robert Greenwald’s Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on
Journalism (2004). Greenwald interprets Fox footage through a statistical
analysis that exposes the right-wing slant of the network’s visual and oral
discourse. Lee’s selection of media footage recounting Katrina’s devas-
tation illustrates what Greenwald defines as the “Fox effect,” which has
reverberated throughout the American media that imitate “Fox’s rhetoric
of sensationalism, blurring news and political commentary, aggressive
graphics and displays of patriotism.”27 Lee points to words and images
that were chosen to sensationalize the events, shaping the humanitarian
crisis into a crime story that generated fear. Whilst such words as looters
amplified the impression of chaos conveyed by the scenes of disorder,
public debates focused on the issue of law and order that caused havoc
in the apocalyptic city. Governor Blanco authorized the military to take
aim and shoot when necessary, thus exacerbating the tense atmosphere
and the impression of danger that prevailed [WTLB, Act 2, 11:00]. When
General Russel L. Honoré ordered the troops into New Orleans, he was
hailed a hero by politicians and television presenters alike, who trans-
formed the failures of local and federal authorities into public successes.
Nancy Boyd-Franklin underlines the embedded racism found in
media reporting on Katrina and argues that the viewers’ memories of
Katrina have been shaped by distorted images that articulated and repro-
duced an enduring racial cleavage. The media contributed to misrepre-
senting the crisis by aggressively racializing poverty and crime:

Although much of the reporting on snipers, gunfire, homicides,

gangs of youth roaming the city, rapes, and so forth was later
proven false, the images endured. Interestingly, coverage of
predominantly white, middle-class areas did not include these
stereotypic references to violence—it was only mentioned in the
coverage of areas such as the Superdome and the Convention
Center, which housed large numbers of African Americans.28

Lee pinpoints the conservative-leaning interpretation of the situation

through the journalists’ narrow field of reporting, which he visually
expresses by inserting a series of close-ups on sensationalizing headlines.
Lee criticizes the dramatic media angle by zooming in on such headlines
as “Bullets kill another man in Central City,” “No one admits to seeing
anything,” “Four killed in Slidell,” while Mayor Ray Nagin can be heard

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in voice-over blaming the poor educational system of the city with paving
the way for rising criminality rates. According to him, the dysfunctional
educational system produces the black youths’ exclusion which gives them
little option but to turn to gangster life.
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise assesses the progress made
in the fight against crime over a time span of five years through an inter-
view with Tulane University criminologist Peter Scharf. Not only does the
scholar cynically call New Orleans “the murder capital city of the United
States,” but he also presents the results of his on-field studies through
statistics that connote a bleak picture:

First of all, the numbers are staggering. In 2007, we had 210

murders which, according to new demographic statistics, puts
us at over 100 per 100,000; New York is at 5.5. The tragedy is
most of the murderers are African American young males and
we’re at 58 per 100,000—that puts us 20% higher than any city
in the country. In the group class I work with at Booker T.
Washington, half of the kids have seen somebody murdered. So
you know, you get desensitized. During the study, 18% of the
kids have carried a gun in the last 30 days. They kill because
of circumstance and they kill because they think it’s right to
kill. [IGIW, Part 2, 22:00]

Lee cuts from the talking-head conversation to a mug shot of fifteen-

year-old David Bonds, whose criminal record includes the murder of
Dinerral “Dick” Shavers: the young man was shot in the back as he was
driving through Tremé. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
presented Dinerral Shavers as a drum player in the Hot 8 Brass Band
and the announcement of his death in the sequel provokes an emotional
shock. Lee cuts to crime scene photographs when Peter Scharf argues that
exposure to crime produces the desensitized youth of New Orleans. The
camera zooms in and out of photographs showing the corpses of black
men: one depicts a dead body lying in blood while the other captures
a corpse covered with a black plastic sheet as it is being carted into an
ambulance. The faces of the dead are hidden from view, conveying the
reifying gaze of the murderers who see their victims as preys, and that of
the photographers whose snapshots objectify the dead. The photographs
also capture the faces of intrigued observers and upset loved ones in
opposition to the cold-blooded professional emergency unit carrying the
corpse away. The visuals evoke newsprint photographs that render mur-

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der a banal everyday event, which Lee opposes to footage of the vic-
tim’s mourning family and friends—including Dinerral Shavers’s son who
honors his father’s memory by playing the drums. The whole sequence
suggests death is common sight and human life has little worth in New
Orleans, conveying the sense of desensitization evoked by Peter Scharf.
The corpses of the murdered victims also serve as visual reminders of
Katrina’s dead bodies conspicuously lying on the streets of New Orleans.
The testimony of Donnell Herrington provides a counterpoint to the
media headline as he connects the crime situation in New Orleans to his
personal story in a rap song that expresses an acute sense of helplessness.
He was shot three times in the days that followed Katrina as he was
struggling for his life. Three gunshots can be heard on the soundtrack,
adding to the tense, rugged rhythmic style of his verse:

In August ’05
That’s when Hurricane Katrina came
1836 lives was claimed
Let’s get down to the bottom like who really was to blame
You see 90% was man, the other 10 was rain
We looking all around like this shit kind of strange
While the waters keep rising
Fright gripping the heart, people starting to panic
No food no water, how are we going to manage? [one gunshot
on the soundtrack]
Just when I thought it couldn’t get much worse [one gunshot
on the soundtrack]
I was shot in cold blood by some racist vigilantes [one gunshot
on the soundtrack]
Wish I had armed myself
Meaning I wasn’t strapped in, feeling like a crushed dummy
without a seatbelt
And I’m surrounded by these white devils hunting black men
So a shotgun blast, I was lifted off my feet
And I fell on my ass, my vision blurry
Hearing shots all around me and the last thing I heard was “that
black nigger down”
Now he’s approaching with a gauge in his hand, trying to finish
what he started
But God had a different plan
Through it all and with all of the frustration

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Never thought I’d be at gunpoint facing assassination

By some bloody hand that was racist. [three gunshots on the
soundtrack]
[IGIW, Part 2, 23:39]

The recitation of this rap tune empowers Donnell Herrington as he relates

his victimization to a larger cultural context, which allows him to tran-
scend his status as a wounded black man into that of an accuser demand-
ing for justice and speaking out against racial prejudice. The situation he
relates could be an excerpt from a slave narrative or a reported case of
lynching with “white devils hunting black men.” Donnell Herrington takes
into account the historical, racial backdrop of the city when telling his
story, emphasizing the point that his aggressor wilfully made the decision
to pull the trigger on him because he was a black man. His rap thus pur-
sues the fight against discrimination and racial violence, turning him into
a contemporary figure of the Civil Rights movement. However, he con-
fesses he thought his attacker Roland Bourgeois would never be arrested
for shooting at him in a desperate racist attempt to protect Algiers from
black intrusion. Frontline investigative reporter AC Thompson explains
that Donnell Herrington owned up to him that “it felt like my life didn’t
matter.” His testimony conveys the idea that racial oppression devalues the
worth of life among African Americans and that violence targeted at black
people has all too often been normalized. Donnell does not express much
self-esteem believing the police would never solve the case of his assault.
Echoing his subjective remarks, Michael Eric Dyson draws on the history
of crime and justice in American society when writing that “black life is
at a low premium, and to hurt, maim, or murder a black person carried
little punitive consequences or public concern.”29 The not-guilty verdict
that allowed Emmett Till’s white murderers Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam
to walk out of the courtroom as free men is but one of the most notorious
examples. The boy’s mother published images of the brutalized black child
as an accusation tool; Donnell displays the scars in his neck in front of
the camera, exposing racial cruelty and politicizing his body as Emmett
Till’s mother did with her child’s.30 Through Donnell Herrington’s story, Lee
captures the psychological trauma which racist violence produces: Donnell
Herrington felt deprived of his humanity and was objectified by the gun-
shots which a white man fired at him because of the color of his skin.31 This
story resonates with a series of other tales of racial violence, including the
murder of Trayvon Martin in February 2012 and the shooting of Michael

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Brown in August 2014. The space given to Herrington’s testimony turns

the film into an activist tool against racial violence, which Lee links to the
disparaging images of black youths broadcast by the media.
Herrington was shot again a few years later and part of his leg
had to be amputated, which he explains looking straight at the camera
in If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise. Some black men wanted
to rob him of his car and fired a round of bullets which hit him in the
hip and in the leg. In the two films he is interviewed with New Orleans
horizon in the far background, across what may be a canal or a lake,
pinpointing a state of paralysis. Although five years had elapsed since the
first interview, Donnell Herrington had to go through the same healing
process after being shot again. He suffered two attempts on his life: one
was an overtly racist crime whereas the other was a case of “black-on-
black crime.” Both, however, seem to originate from the same cultural
climate of social and racial violence permeating the city. Criminologist
Bernard Headly deems that black on black crime results from the eco-
nomic conditions that push African Americans to the fringe of American
society: “Crime is not the result of blackness (which is what the notion
of ‘black on black’ crime implies), but rather of a complex of social and
economic conditions—a negative ‘situational matrix’—brought on by the
capitalist mode of production, in which both the black victim and the
black victimizer are intricately locked in a deadly game of survival.”32 He
further argues that the connection between skin color and social status
produces a deadlock situation, which may account for the high level of
crime among the poor living in urban ghettoes that are clearly demarcated
by race. His comments suggest that reconstruction may have provided
an opportunity to challenge the city’s racial divide. New Orleans edu-
cation programs (including the promotion of charter schools) may have
represented an attempt at dealing with inequality by improving school
standards to “create new people for a new way of life”—in the words of
education Professor Pauline Lipman.33
The media focus on crime and poverty does not construct a posi-
tive image of blackness which, Fred Johnson argues in the film, produces
self-destructive violence: “A lot of black on black crime has to do with
self-hatred. When you don’t like yourself, when you look at yourself in
the mirror and you don’t like what you see, [. . .] you’re prone to hurt
that which looks like you” [IGIW, Part 2, 18:50]. These words express the
weight of race on an individual who has internalized oppression, a feeling
which Gloria Yamato links to systematic oppression:

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The oppressors are purported to have an innate inability to

access economic resources, information, respect, etc., while the
oppressed are believed to have a corresponding negative innate
ability. The flip side of oppression is internalized oppression.
Members of the target group are emotionally, physically, and
spiritually battered to the point that they begin to actually
believe that their oppression is deserved, is their lot in life, is
natural and right, and that it doesn’t even exist.34

Spike Lee prompts his interviewees to transcend the victimization which

the media portray by giving them a voice in his documentaries and by
endorsing their activist stance in If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t
Rise. Such endeavor undergirds the portrayal of Jim Brown, who became a
paradoxical icon in American society, illustrating contradictory reactions
to race, success, and scandal.

The Myth of the Black Athlete:

From the Limelight to the Gutter
Jim Brown: All-American provides a close analysis of African-American
athlete Jim Brown’s emblematic career from the football fields to the Hol-
lywood screen. Spike Lee spotlights the invisible prejudices that seep in
the media’s portrayal of African-American athletes and underlines the
power of stereotypes to mold narratives of blackness through Brown’s
biography. The film begins with sports presenters commenting live on
his football running tactics; their voices overlap and create a soundscape
that enshrouds the viewer facing a dark screen. Exploiting the interstices
between the visual and the aural tracks, Lee tries to dredge up memories
of Jim Brown’s record-breaking scores. The sports commentators enthu-
siastically depict the hectic races of the football player as he advances
the ball into the opposite team’s end zone without being tackled. Their
voice-overs conjure up the suspense of the match, counting the meters
as Brown rushes across the football field:

Jim Brown gets the ball to the 30, to the 35, he fights away
at the 40. Jim Brown gets to the 45, he’s still fighting to
midfield . . . [Voice overlap by the end of the second sen-
tence] . . . hands the ball to Jim Brown outside left end to
the 40 . . . He’s to the 45, he’s to midfield, he’s to the 40, Jim
Brown to the 30 . . . Jim Brown to the 20. [. . .] Jim Brown
is going to score.

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Jim Brown is identified by the figures of a two-digit number that looms

on his back when his name appears on the screen, referring to his jersey
number within the Cleveland Browns. From 1957 until 1965, Brown was
associated with number 32, which metaphorically signifies the commod-
ification of his name by sports presenters, whose excited remarks hint
at the passion aroused by the spectacle he provided in a highly media-
tized sports culture. They convey the thrill of winning, which the athlete
inspired through “his power, speed, ability to change speeds and direc-
tions, stamina, leadership skills, and mental endurance” as summarized in
the article dedicated to him in African American Icons of Sport, Triumph,
Courage and Excellence.35

Figure 3.1. Jim Brown: All American includes archival footage that gives a glimpse
into the past glory of the football player whose name became synonymous with
number 32 among the Brown’s fans. Courtesy of Photofest

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The voices surrounding Brown create a myth that Lee strives to

debunk by exposing the technical tools used by the media to turn the
athlete into a star. The viewer is made to believe that s/he is watching a
football match with Jim Brown as number 32: the camera follows a figure
walking in the shade of a corridor from the changing-rooms to the foot-
ball ground, whereas archival recordings create a soundscape that plunges
the viewer into the mythical past of the football icon. When Brown walks
out of the shade into the sunlight-bathed field, he is dressed in black and
the stadium is empty. Yet we can still hear spectators screaming on the
soundtrack as though a football match was really taking place. Viewers
may have recognized Brown’s gait because his body language fits the image
a whole generation has memorized through watching his football deeds
on television and his stunts in cinema. However, the man does not turn
around to face the camera, frustrating the viewer’s voyeuristic desire. The
opening sequence exploits the discrepancy between the image and the
soundtracks to posit that the icon being talked about does not reflect
the man walking down the corridor. The character shaped by the media
does not unveil Brown’s true personality, which may have driven him
to write his own autobiography in collaboration with Steve Desohn in a
book published in 1989 whose title evokes his life beyond the field—Out
of Bounds.36 The opening sequence revives the legend built around Jim
Brown, pointing to football as a spectacle that turns the players into pop-
ular heroes. The film underscores the semiotic elements which underlie
the social construction of race and sports: the figure of the black athlete
is reified by words and numbers that enhance his prowess on the field.
Lee probes the discrepancy between the media portrayal of the football
player and his self-image by allowing Jim Brown to speak about his own
life. Jim Brown: All-American pinpoints the alienating power of images
that isolated Brown from the people around him through fashioning a
stereotypical racial narrative—which begs an analysis that will be devel-
oped further in this chapter. Lee offers a close examination of Brown’s
career, which he discusses with the character himself, both to rejuvenate
his tarnished reputation and to study the power of media biases.
My approach to the film draws on cultural semiotics, which French
philosopher Roland Barthes developed to decipher the ideological dis-
course that underpins mass media visuals, articulating a critical perspec-
tive on sports-as-spectacle in his Mythologies.37 Barthes collaborated with
Quebec writer Hubert Aquin on the production of a short documentary
film entitled Le Sport et les hommes, which features a voice-over com-
mentary written by Barthes, applying his notion of myth to five national

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sports: bullfighting, car races, the Tour de France bicycle race, ice hockey,
soccer. Couched in a short essay entitled What is Sport? Barthes’s remarks
underline the social function of athletes in a culture that uses sports
to perform ancient rituals purging violence from society. A few pages
are devoted to soccer in England, which may be deemed as popular as
American football in America:

Why love sport? First, it must be remembered that everything

happening to the player also happens to the spectator. But
whereas in the theatre the spectator is only a voyeur, in sport
he is a participant, an actor. And then, in sport, man does not
confront man directly. There enters between them an intermedi-
ary, a stake, a machine, a puck, or a ball. And this thing is the
very symbol of things: it is in order to possess it, to master it,
that one is strong, adroit, courageous. To watch is not only to
live, to suffer, to hope, to understand but also, and especially,
to say so—by voice, by gesture, by facial expression. [. . .] In
sport, man experiences life’s fatal combat, but this combat is
distanced by the spectacle, reduced to its forms, cleared of its
effects, of its dangers, and of its shames: it loses its noxiousness,
not its brilliance or its meaning.38

Barthes underscores the collective dimension of soccer: the spectator is

invited to identify with the players running on the field in defiance of
their opponents, living the games by proxy through the television screen.
The focus on individual players mystifies athletic prowess, allowing the
spectator to emotionally share in the fight that unfolds; s/he is meta-
phorically invited to withstand the test of combat. The first minutes of
Jim Brown: All-American could be presented as a response to Barthes’s
question “Why love sport?” since the presenters’ voices are able to arouse
the spectator’s desire to see the match commented on, appealing to the
mystifying elements of sport through their detailed comments. Their focus
on Brown makes every gesture a symbol, whereas their tone of voice car-
ries emotions they probably wear on their faces. Missing from Barthes’s
analysis, however, is the racial dimension which impacts the ideological
discourse shaped by sports-as-spectacle.
Following Barthes’s theoretical demonstration, it may be argued that
Brown denotes an African-American football player, yet his name con-
notes his commodification by the media and the sports industry. He was
made an icon in the spectacle of media culture which, according to Guy

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Debord, dramatizes society’s dominant values.39 Jim Brown was turned

into a sport icon by the racial discourse crafted around his masculine
athletic prowess. As illustrated by the voice-overs’ observations in the title
sequence, the media highlighted Jim Brown’s physical qualities, giving rise
to “stories of mental fortitude and gritty determination”40 which made a
legend of number 32. The public persona of Jim Brown is constructed
by the interviews turning the man into an object being spoken about,
shedding light on Brown’s natural superiority rather than his intense prac-
tice. Art Modell, Cleveland Browns’ owner from 1961 until 1995, typi-
cally understands Brown’s accomplishments as hyper-masculine prowess.
Sociologist Patrick D. Miller argues that racial prejudice undergirds the
interpretation of sporting achievements: white accomplishments bespeak
“diligence, forethought and application for the mind” whereas those of
blacks are understood as a “natural” and “innate” predisposition.41 The
comments made on Jim Brown throughout the film illustrate this racist
frame of interpretation. Cultural sociologist Ben Carrington argues that
the media reinforce such arguments, relating the notion of race to an
athletic predisposition while dramatizing each African-American achieve-
ment into a sensational plot:

Black accomplishment in sport could not be understood as due

to individual achievement, driven by dedication, hard work and
perseverance in the contest of a deeply racist system that all
but denied opportunities for self-actualization in most other
areas. [. . .] In fact, with each sporting victory, each successful
punch thrown, each finish line crossed, each broken record,
‘race’ was further consolidated and embedded as a demonstrable
fact of ontological difference.42

In opposition to the deeply racist views which the media spectacle endors-
es, Lee focuses on the tactics Brown devised after studying the opposite
teams’ techniques, thereby anticipating the players’ courses of actions to
achieve victory. The second sequence starts on a football field with Jim
Brown, Joe Frazier, and Hank Aaron addressing Baltimore Ravens during
Final Practice before Super Bowl XXXV on January 26, 2001. Lee uses a
dissolve to shift from the first to the second sequence, thus linking the
icon of the past to the training that the media tend to overshadow when
focusing on the athletes’ noteworthy deeds only. Brown’s advice to the
team sheds light on the qualities he values to win: “intimidate them with
your physicality and overwhelm them with your mentality” [05:18]. Lee
highlights the ironic counterpoint between Jim Brown’s comments and the

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statements made on him, aiming to reveal the weight of racial prejudice

in the area of sports.
Jim Brown: All-American deconstructs Brown’s public persona by
allowing an older Jim Brown to look back at his own life story in a narra-
tive that creates a dialogical space around the public memory of a younger
Brown. Coaches and friends express their views and help piece together
a multifaceted portrait of Brown, which demonstrates the impact of the
media’s racial framing on individual perceptions. The second sequence is
interspersed with archival footage and a couple of interviews illustrating
this point: Art Modell recalls Brown’s exceptional physical qualities (“he
did things I didn’t think were possible” [03:53]) whereas Dr. Walter Beach
III explains what Brown represented for himself and other teammates,
stating that “he was one that represented what a man should be about
[. . .]. He was at the forefront of standing up for his African maleness”
[04:30]. The interviewees pinpoint the diverse and sometimes contradicto-
ry ideas Brown did arouse, disclosing as much information on themselves
as on Brown: Art Modell evokes the pleasure of the gaze when depict-
ing Brown’s physical abilities whereas Dr. Walter Beach III underscores
Brown’s idealized maleness, expressing a model of masculinity other black
players aspired to. These conversations reveal Brown’s commodified body
can be appropriated in various discourses, which may reflexively foreshad-
ow that the sport biographical documentary will only produce another
type of discourse and flesh out another fantasy character.43 In a 1970
Chicago Defender interview, Brown himself admitted that “images are
just that—shadows in the minds of people who don’t even know you. A
man and his image are seldom similar.”44 Lee tries to counter the media
biases by allowing Brown to take part in the film so that he might give
his version of events that repeatedly stained his reputation—which may
appear as a shady prospect to some of Lee’s detractors.
Not only does Jim Brown: All-American emphasize the athlete’s obsti-
nacy as a key to his success in sports, but it also underlines the role of an
influential go-between that permitted him to breach the color line. Attor-
ney Molloy played a pivotal role in Brown’s career, negotiating his admis-
sion at Syracuse University by overriding institutional racism: Brown was
not granted an athletic scholarship, a fact which could have turned him
away from sports into street crime. The documentary intertwines snippets
of interviews that address the relationship between race and sports, high-
lighting the various types of constraints that African-American students
had to overcome during segregation. Although he excelled in basketball,
track, lacrosse, football and even qualified for the Olympic Games as a
decathlon athlete in 1956,45 Brown was discriminated against at Syracuse

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University (from 1953 until 1957). He recalls anecdotes that exemplify the
humiliating, prejudiced situations he was confronted with, being either
placed on the sidelines for most of the games or verbally dissuaded from
pursuing a sport career. Brown voices the bitter disappointment he had
to deal with: “If you were a person of color, it was very difficult to be
accepted on any kind of equal level. They kept telling me I wouldn’t be
able to be a running back” [27:00]. Former basketball teammate Manny
Breland explains that he “perceived a kind of unwritten quota as far as
how many black athletes could start on a team” [28:40]. Brown eventually
imposed himself by scoring the most points in a football game during
which he was given a chance to play after two white players got injured
[31:00]. As explained by sports historian Kathryn Jay, “the pressure to
win” was what finally drove schools to integrate their football and bas-
ketball teams.46 Lee cuts to original footage to indicate that the televised
game against Maryland was a turning point, for Brown gained public
recognition which compelled Syracuse football coach to make him play
every game afterwards. Interestingly, the biographical focus on Jim Brown
allows Lee to tackle an array of social and racial issues considering his
life was molded by all the events that occurred in the 1960s’ American
society and threatened its conservative institutions.
Brown’s achievements have contributed to the history of “muscular
assimilationism,” which historians Patrick B. Miller and David K. Wiggins
define as “the slow and often wrenching process” to open mainstream
American sport to the full participation of African Americans.47 The doc-
umentary pinpoints the relationship between Brown’s breakthroughs in
sports at Syracuse University, where he encountered racism on a daily
basis, and the larger civil rights crusade he personally endorsed in the
1960s, by having sports journalist Ralph Wiley speak about Brown’s sport
career as a fight against prejudice:

As an American black man, an African American historically

told to be docile, to be quiet, to be accepting of the abuse
heaped upon you, Jim Brown said “I’m the best at this game
and nobody can stop me” and nobody did stop him. And
they tried all manner of things to stop him. Fighting, talking,
cursing, kicking in very private areas, mentally affecting him,
trying to dominate him. [32:00]

Brown himself does not mention the blows he received, calling atten-
tion to his achievements instead. He projected racial pride and asser-

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tiveness as his sport performances gained him respect, thus merging his
black masculine identity with his sport image, foreshadowing the Black
Power iconography of the 1960s. He relates that, during his senior year,
he purchased a large red and white Pontiac Bonneville that he provoca-
tively drove around campus. Lee ironically pans across an old advert of
the Pontiac, suggesting that Brown appropriated a symbol of success in
American white patriarchal society. He used the car to break the unwrit-
ten segregationist rules of Syracuse when he drove a white girlfriend to
one of his home lacrosse games and kissed her mouth in public [31:30].
The sequence ends with a fade out that suggests the gap between college
sports and going professional in so far as the change of status transformed
Brown into a committed activist.
Kathryn Jay examines Brown’s public success in relation to a change
in the spectacle of sports as the athlete arrived in “the league just as it
had begun to capture the imagination of American TV viewers.”48 Brown’s
athletic skills electrified spectators who were keen to watch National Foot-
ball League Sunday afternoon games on television. Lee films football fans
waiting and drinking outside a stadium to show the popularity of a sport
that made Brown a hero. Fans sport their favorite teams’ caps and tee
shirts in opposition to Christians’ appeals that they “worship Jesus not
football” [34:10]. American football has become a moneymaking specta-
cle, with each team selling by-products emblazoned with its logo.49 The
marketing revolution that affected sports in the 1980s impacts the doc-
umentary: the editing connects different types of footage, opposing the
lavish colored contemporary football ground [35:14] to the black and
white archival material [37:00] whereas Brown’s voice-over advertises the
myth: “Each new Sunday meant a broad new challenge rich with new
opportunities. A time for achievement. A time for glory.” The dramatic
musical score turns football into a spectacular drama, enlivening the game
by enhancing individual skills and actions. Clicking cameras surround
Brown even though he is no longer a player [35:00], suggesting that he
became an entertainment figure before he was even given his first role
by Hollywood. Not only did he provide the type of actions needed to
entertain the viewers, but he also attracted further attention in public
appearances after the games. Mike Freeman explains that Jim Brown was
a celebrity whom people vied to be seen with:

Each football accomplishment was also purposely punctuated

by a public statement or appearance. Everyone wanted to
speak to him, to be close to him. No one was exempt from

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desiring to be in his presence, not the many women who

courted him, not even American presidents. In December of
1963, after beating Washington, Jim and teammate Frank Ryan,
the Browns quarterback, were invited to the White House by
Lyndon B. Johnson.50

Lee reconstructs the life of Jim Brown in a documentary that sheds light on
the making of his public image as both a hero and an antihero. Although
Brown’s sports career was perhaps a somewhat unique achievement for
an African American athlete in the 1950s, the development of college
sports as a commercial venture opened up opportunities that broadened
the horizon of an increasing number of African-American athletes. Sports
sociologist Michael A. Messner draws from his on-field studies to pos-
it that college sports continue to attract youths from lower-status back-
ground, among them a majority of African Americans, only to limit their
activities to sports.51 Such was the walk of life followed by Jim Brown,
who devoted most of his time to practicing and improving his athletic
skills instead of studying for a degree. Lee does not completely challenge
the stereotypical narrative since he does not mention Brown’s academic
achievements, relating the construction of his masculine identity to his
athletic career instead. Brown received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Phys-
ical Education from the College of Liberal Arts of Syracuse University in
1957, which is not stated in the film.
Brown’s football career soon conflicted with his film engagements:
he missed the early 1966 football season when the production of Robert
Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen got delayed, forcing Brown to remain in Eng-
land while his team played the first games. Art Modell decided to suspend
him, which entailed a fine that Brown refused to pay by anticipating his
retirement from football. The Dirty Dozen was to become the box-office
success of 1967, boosting his career in Hollywood where he was offered
more opportunities. Lee highlights the transformation of Brown’s image
into a black icon of the Blaxploitation cycle, which was initiated by Melvin
Van Peeble’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). The film provided
the model emulated by the studios in the 1970s: Sweetback represents the
African-American hyper-masculine hero who awakens to racial injustice
and rebels against the authority of the white oppressor by flouting his
laws: Sweetback kills a policeman, makes love to a white woman, and
runs away to Mexico. Black audiences were invited to indulge in the pleas-
ure of watching Blaxploitation films that incorporated sex, violence, and
“super-cool” individualism.52 From Ice Station Zebra (John Sturges, 1968)

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and Riot (Buzz Kulik, 1969) to Slaughter (Jack Starrett, 1972) and Take a
Hard Ride (Antoni Margheriti, 1975), Brown established a new paradigm
for black male actors, performing acts of violence that characterized his
screen persona in stark contrast to Sidney Poitier, whose popularity with
crossover audiences was linked to a weak racial identity and repressed
sexuality.53 Brown’s screen persona challenged the Poitier character; his
physical demeanor countered the emasculated figure of the integrationist
hero who compromised his virility in such films as Guess Who’s Coming
to Dinner? (Stanley Kramer, 1967). Donald Bogle explains that Brown’s
arrogance touched “on the needs of the new younger black audience for
more assertive, more aggressive, more powerful African American char-
acters” [1:17:39].54 Lee stitches together extracts from various films to
reconstruct the screen persona of Brown, selecting passages that depict
him as an action hero: he runs, fights, speaks his mind, makes love to
white women. Brown radiated racial pride and acted out masculinity, capi-
talizing on the virile image developed in a sport which encouraged “rough
play”55 as Brown writes in his autobiography calling himself a “soldier
of fortune”56 on the field. Although he reflected “an emergent assertive,
sometimes violent, black manhood,” exuding “a sexual expressiveness long
denied blacks on screen,”57 the roles Brown interpreted did not subvert the
ideological framework prevailing in Hollywood. Film critic Ed Guerrero
underlines the limits of the hyper-sexualized iconography characterizing
the representation of blackness on screen since Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet
Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971):58

For all the new potent force, sexuality, and assertiveness

expressed in the images, bodies and portrayals of the macho
men, their strength was almost always either at the service, or
under the control, of white institutional power and authority.
[. . .] In The Dirty Dozen, Jim Brown starts off as an incor-
rigible convict but ends up enthusiastically serving America’s
war effort. [. . .] The “football heroes” offered only superficial
variations of older codes and themes, and the black film critic
Donald Bogle goes so far as to call Brown’s characters “nothing
more than the black buck of old.”59

The documentary includes an interview with Van Peebles, who consid-

ers Brown is another Sweetback. While Huey P. Newton extolled Sweet-
back’s adventures in the context of an individual and collective rebellion
against the oppressor,60 Van Peebles fails to notice that Brown’s character,

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including his sex appeal, was turned into a commodified asset of the
Blaxploitation era. Brown may project male sexual power and virile mas-
culinity like Sweetback; however, the representation of black sexuality and
violence on screen became part of a commercial endeavor, repeatedly used
as a promotion tool to entice African-American viewers into the cinemas.
Blaxploitation created a special market niche, which Hollywood studios
were keen to exploit in the 1970s. Sports sociologist Ben Carrington com-
pares various African-American athletes who turned to an acting career
in the 1930s, including heavyweight boxers Joe Jeanette and John Lester
Johnson (Wild Man from Borneo, 1933; Ali Baba Goes to Town, 1937;
Tarzan’s Revenge, 1938) and remarks that most of them “were given roles
that were defined by and limited to their physicality and that served to
reproduce a superficial, sexualized and primitive representation of black-
ness.”61 Brown’s film persona suggests that challenging as the 1960s might
have been on the political level, they did not transform the “muscle roles”
into round characters on screen.62
Jim Brown’s life as an African-American cultural icon illustrates the
ups and downs of a public career for an ex-athlete: while his talent at
playing football drew admiration and opened him a second professional
career in Hollywood, he was a vulnerable target to the rumors and accusa-
tions that questioned his morality and sexuality. Although the documen-
tary enhances Brown’s heroic deeds on the football fields, it also captures
the ambiguities of representation that shattered his public image. Brown’s
name was dragged in the gutter when several major scandals erupted and
precipitated his fall from the limelight. The film interprets this reversal
of fate in the light of a racial subtext, which permeates media coverage
on race and crime. When portraying Jim Brown, Spike Lee dwells on the
accusations that repeatedly tainted the athlete’s reputation—including a
rape case in 1965, an assault and battery charge in 1966, driving without
a license in the early 1960s and other misdemeanors which caused the FBI
to collect and compile records and data on him.63 Brown was entangled
in affairs that made juicy press releases, yet they do not crop up until an
hour and a half into Lee’s documentary in reference to the moment when
Brown was arrested on rape charges on February 21, 1985 [01:29:00].
Embedded footage shows that Brown’s private life was brought into the
limelight, disclosing a turbulent past that overturned the perception of
him. The media headlines influenced public perception by highlighting
his criminal record, erasing all the positive deeds he had accomplished as
a committed celebrity. Brown was presented as a woman abuser, whose
achievements either as an athlete or a social activist were simply forgotten.

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Lee includes television footage to retrace how Brown’s arrest was broadcast
into breaking news: television presenters emphasized the descent of the
star from his iconic status to the level of street crime by recalling inci-
dents that marred his past (“1965—Paternity and sexual assault; 1968—
Assault and resisting arrest; 1978—Assaulting a golf partner”) [01:30:00].
They listed all the charges pressed on Brown before 1985, summarizing
his police record in a few dates that were displayed beside a close-up
of his face. The photograph resembled a police mug shot, thus visually
expressing negative views and shaping biased public opinions on a man
whose version of the story had not yet been heard. Brown was framed
as a criminal in the news flash, which used Brown’s celebrity status to
increase audience rates.
Spike Lee demonstrates that the media exploited Jim Brown’s crim-
inal record to make it fit into a preexisting ideological framework. The
media focus on the assault and battery charges reactivated primal fear of
black male sexuality, echoing the treatment of the O. J Simpson case which
provided a race spectacle that filled the television programs for weeks on
end. Simpson’s trial and tribulations after his ex-wife Nicole Brown and
her friend Ronald Goldman were found dead on June 12, 1994, produced
an entertaining drama. Film critic Linda Williams remarks that daily air-
ings dramatized the case, for each new piece of information introduced a
twist in the story, holding the viewers’ attention from day in to day out.64
Williams suggests that the charges leveled against Simpson were crafted
by the media in a narrative that endorsed a traditional melodramatic line
casting Simpson into a dual role as victim and/or villain. She points to
this dichotomy when analyzing the television mise en scène of the case,
enhancing the racial bias that seeped into the media’s portrayal of Simp-
son. His public image was reversed to fit the stereotype of the “brutal black
buck” (mentioned by Bogle), who could not stand his white wife’s betrayal
and was bound to be her killer.65 Simpson’s image as a criminal was based
on a racist fantasy of blackness, which the media spread instead of seeking
out the truth: Simpson’s mug shot was used as an icon of his criminal
behavior linked with skin color.66 The former football player focused the
attention of the “media spectacle,” which marked a shift from journalism
to infotainment according to Douglas Kellner, emphasizing the voyeuristic
nature of the media dealing with a celebrity case.67
The narrative construction of Jim Brown: All American highlights
the manipulation of images, which framed Brown into another “violent
black man.” Lee, however, counters the melodramatic spectacle conceived
at the time by allowing Brown to respond and to comment on the events

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which cast him into a victim/villain. Through testifying in front of Lee’s

camera, he recovers a voice he was deprived of during the events, trapped
by the on-going media spectacle around his alleged crime. Lee adopts an
editing technique that he will further explore in subsequent documenta-
ries, connecting various narrative strands that complicate the media story,
raising suspicion against the veracity of the accusations leveled at Brown.
A slow musical tune is edited over the extract from “Larry King Live”
show, creating a sound layer that undermines the presenter’s dramatic
tone of voice as he demands Brown to defend himself in the face of an
accusation: didn’t he try to throw “a woman off a second-story balcony”?
[1:39:00]. The added music weakens the shocking effect the presenter
aimed to produce by having Brown confront live direct accusations. Lee
cuts to an interview with Eva Maria Bohn-Chin, whose testimony does
not clarify the episode of her fall off the balcony of her apartment, offering
a confused version of the events that fails to convince. Lee cannot restore
the dialogue between the two former lovers, whose stories he tries to
connect by crosscutting from one interview to the other, thus rewriting
the drama that occurred in 1968.
Spike Lee suggests that Jim Brown was tricked by the image of
strong masculinity, which his sport career and his Blaxploitation films had
shaped. The documentary includes an extract from Fingers (James Toback,
1978), which depicts him hitting two women’s heads in a scene that evokes
the possible confusion between his film persona and his individual char-
acter. Brown was punished for exhibiting his body muscles and baring
his skin in Blaxploitation films’ interracial love scenes.68 Because Raquel
Welch played a Mexican whose racial status historically differs from that
of white Americans,69 the big screen’s first interracial love scene in One
Hundred Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969) did not spark as much controversy as
that of Slaughter (Jack Starrett, 1972). The latter film includes a nude love
scene between Jim Brown and Stella Stevens, which overtly challenged
the white supremacist notion of the “purity and sanctity of white wom-
anhood” idealized in the plantation genre according to Ed Guerrero.70
The blonde actress was the personification of an American stereotype of
femininity, thus making the film’s couple of interracial sex scenes more
shocking to some white viewers, who accused Stella Stevens of misbe-
having on screen. For film scholar Mikel J. Koven, Slaughter represents
an example of “white-made Blaxploitation,” the only African-American
character in the film being Slaughter himself, played by Brown, “fulfilling
a kind of James Bond role.”71 The author argues that the use of violence in
the film is exploitative in so far as it does not convey the political subtext
attached to Sweetback’s rebellion:

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The most interesting subtextual strand of the film, again

from a very white perspective, is its—and, one supposes, the
audience’s—fear of black masculine sexuality, particularly the
black man’s desire for the white woman. Black masculinity is
displayed in a rather fetishistic way. We are supposed to want
to be like Slaughter (the tough action man who is a hit with
all the ladies) and yet he is rejected because he is different (i.e.,
black). This contradiction is demonstrated by the framing of
Brown’s muscular body, naked from the waist up, while that
body is being humiliated and destroyed in scenes of violence
and torture.72

While actress Stella Stevens testifies that she was insulted in public for her
role in the film, Lee points out the aesthetic and political limits of Blax-
ploitation as he cuts to another extract from Slaughter depicting domestic
violence: the betrayed husband kicks his unfaithful wife to the ground,
vicariously avenging the white viewer’s humiliation [1:15:00]. Ironical-
ly, the scene also foreshadows the moment when Brown himself hit the
headlines for assault and battery.
Witnesses’ comments also illustrate that they were confused by
Brown’s public image, as though his screen persona had merged with
his true character. His wife Monique recalls that she phoned the police
in a panic attack on June 15, 1999, because she was scared after Brown
had vandalized her car in a fit of rage [01:34:00]. When sports talk radio
host Mike Francesca speaks about Brown, he employs highly connoted
words and metaphors that enhance the threat he represented as the “racial
other”: he first reports stories he heard on the grapevine (“that he was a
very violent man, whether it was choking a guy on a golf course . . . I
wasn’t there so I don’t know . . . or being very hard on women”) and
draws conclusions that betray his own fear of Brown (“You’re always a
step away from setting off that volcano in Jim Brown”) [1:33:55].
Brown’s running interviews widen the gap between himself and oth-
ers and testify to the distance between the present (his evenly balanced
speech) and the past (the public images recorded in dated films). Lee is
interested in the cultural phenomenon which Brown represents, analyzing
the tensions that bore on him as an icon of black masculinity and militan-
cy. The film restores Brown’s voice in opposition to his commodification
by the media, which consistently framed him into negative stereotypes.
Lee’s documentary strives to counter the dramatization effect that under-
pins the media: the public persona of Jim Brown is given a human dimen-
sion through the interviews, which the film director exploits to debunk

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the stereotype of the “brutal black buck,” laying bare the racist discourse
that invisibly pervades the media’s treatment of actuality. Through his
portrayal of Jim Brown, Lee offers a racial analysis of the “black athlete”
narrative, pointing to the ideological framework that undergirds the treat-
ment of race on television. The filmmaker pursues the same endeavor
when scrutinizing the Black Panthers’ media representation through A
Huey P. Newton Story.

The Media Story of the Panthers

Spike Lee confronts the media story of the Panthers to Roger Guenveur
Smith’s one-man show, developing a dual narrative strand in A Huey P.
Newton Story: the media representation of the Panthers is measured up
against Smith’s interpretation. The film starts in the dark after the credits
fade; Smith lights a cigarette in a cacophony of blinding flashes whereas
shot-reverse shots oppose the single figure of the comedian to the black-
and-white footage of a crowd of photographers aiming their cameras in
the same direction. A frenzy of clicking camera shutters resounds like
gunshots fired at the man’s body. The flashes reveal the character of New-
ton as a weak figure, hiding his vulnerable body in the shade, his voice
hardly piercing through the whistling sound of the microphone. The full
shot isolates him in the middle of the stage in counterpoint to the viewers’
silhouettes standing in line in the background, watching Newton from
behind wire netting as though he was a dangerous animal in a cage. The
square shape of the stage and the upper balconies create a prison-like
setting, with the viewers waiting to visit a dear one in the corridors of a
high-security penitentiary or attending an execution that is about to take
place. Lee captures the backlit figures of onlookers wearing the Panthers’
outfit, including the beret and the leather jacket, thus acknowledging the
legacy of the party in the present and emphasizing the enduring power
of the philosophy of the movement.
Instead of the wicker chair in which Newton had been photographed
by Eldridge Cleaver for the promotional poster of the Party, used as an
iconic prop in a 1968 rally to symbolize Newton’s absence whilst in prison,
the chair of the film/play is made of wood with a high back and straight
legs, evoking the witness box in a courtroom, the setting of an interro-
gation room, and the electric chair. The film posits the distance between
an older Newton (interpreted by Smith) and the “warrior hero of the
famous poster”73 by juxtaposing two visual discourses: the seated figure

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of Smith in the foreground counterpoints the strutting erect Panthers of

the past, appearing in the archival footage projected in the background.
The backdrop evokes a highly mediated environment, which Newton
did not manage to control, constructing a false image of himself. Even
though he joined Malcolm X, Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and H.
Rap Brown, “who exuded manhood and potent masculine street brava-
do,”74 he appears as an emasculated shadow in the film—sometimes even
reduced to a blurred image [06:35]. Judith Newton argues that Newton
ostensibly hated and “was terrified of having to live up to the idea that
the famous poster projected.”75
The character played by Roger Guenveur Smith visually shies away
from the iconic image that defines Huey P. Newton in the public eye.
Dressed in black from head to toe, the character impersonated by Smith
strives to evade the pressure of a public role. He begins his soliloquy with
an anecdote that minimizes the role of the political leader:

I’m a rather shy individual. I wouldn’t consider myself to be

very charismatic; you know I never did anything hero-like, I just
worked on some little community programs. I do have a role
to play however—I’m a theorist of sorts—I work on theories.
But I really do not enjoy discussing the details of my personal
life except as it relates to the movement. I hate interviews, tape
recorders, microphones stuck up in my face. To tell you the
truth, I hate stages cause they expect you to entertain them.

The camera comes close to the microphone used as a visible prop during
the show, recording the voice of the speaker and shedding light on his
words rather than on his iconography. Newton is presented as someone
who enjoys being listened to, narcissistically drawing attention to himself
and not to the Party.
The film thus exposes the contradictions that characterized New-
ton: although he embodied the Panther Party for Self-Defense, proudly
posing as its co-founder on the posters calling for financial support, he
eschewed standing in the limelight. The film helps restore the Panthers’
political agenda as Smith recites the Party’s “Ten Points Program” on stage,
didactically reflecting on the political issues that undergirded the concep-
tion of the platform in 1966. Smith’s speech slows down as he focuses
on the words that Newton engraved in each chapter of his program; a
video projected in the background shows a secretary typing the words
he is dictating, diverting attention from the figure of Newton to his ideas

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Figure 3.2. Dressed in black from head to toe and chain smoking on stage, Roger
Guenveur Smith embodies Huey P. Newton as an isolated character playing a role
in front of mikes and cameras in A Huey P. Newton Story. Courtesy of Photofest

[09:00]. The film thus characterizes Newton as the philosophical leader

of the Party, highlighting the theoretical underpinning of his political
vision by explicitly quoting from Mao Tse-tung. Lee captures the dynamic
relationship between Smith and an audience that responds enthusiastically
to his statements, thereby hinting at the enduring popularity of Newton
and his points among African Americans: some spectators in the audience
repeat his words when he calls for “All power to the people.”76 Smith gives
a philosophical background to Newton’s promotion of violence, adopting
Mao’s motto “Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”77 The film also
includes a visual reference to Mao through the slogan painted on a sign
hanging above the entrance of a Black Panther Party office indicating
“We serve the people” [15:07]. Among the figures mentioned because
they have shaped his political views appears Malcolm X; Smith borrows
from his rhetoric to justify self-defense “by any means necessary.”78 Smith’s
play draws extensively on Newton’s writing, some extracts of which the
comedian incorporates in his performance.

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The added archival footage provides a contextual backdrop to the

play, creating a visual setting that calls attention to the popular image of
the Panthers: they were framed as a menace by the media, which laid stress
on their aggressive iconography and downplayed their political message.
The memory of the Panthers is epitomized by a few iconic photographs
that underscore the activists’ clothing style: the black leather jacket con-
noted the tough urban ghettoes from which they emerged, highlighting
the virility of hyper-masculine figures; the beret referred to the French
resistance and testified to the Panthers’ militancy, signalling their identi-
fication with the revolutionary programs of the Chicano Brown Berets;79
the sunglasses provocatively defied the gaze of onlookers whilst instilling
mystery and dread into their bold and provocative demeanor. Lee borrows
from the media footage that emphasized the visual shock engendered by
an imagery that frightened the audience. Cultural historian Jane Rhodes
argues that the Panthers’ confidence and defiance, embodied by Newton’s
bravado and arrogance, undermined the visibility of the party’s political
program while reviving racist stereotypes of blackness: “Although their
platform was indistinct, what they represented was not. These visual and
verbal images tapped into white Americans’ primal fears of black male
sexuality.”80 Newton’s political views and the party’s community activi-
ties were overshadowed by the iconic visuals that were circulated in the
media, focusing on the parades organized in support of imprisoned New-
ton rather than on their free breakfast initiative. Although media visibility
helped the Panthers build up the movement, attracting more and more
young blacks into the party that embodied the Black Power slogan used
by Stokely Carmichael in a 1966 rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, the
media focus on the activists’ paramilitary spectacle engendered fantasies
of black violence that deflected attention away from their community
programs and achievements.
The film allows Lee to retrieve a lost message among the abundant
visuals used to discredit the Panthers. Newton’s complex personality crops
up through Smith’s interpretation, challenging the visual stereotype which
the Panthers had devised as a response to the media depiction of the Civil
Rights movement. In Seeing through Race, art historian Martin A Berger
examines press photographs of the 1960s and suggests that there was a
deliberate intent on the part of the white press to publish photographs
that curtailed the heroism of African-American rebellious characters.
Rather than focalize on their bravery, the printed images showed men
and women who subjected themselves to the authority of white counter-
parts. Berger illustrates his point by mentioning the photograph of Rosa

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Parks being fingerprinted by the police after her arrest in 1956 or the
black demonstrators being water hosed in Alabama. He explicitly accuses
the mainstream media of downplaying the civil rights activists’ political
message by turning them into weak figures, which could be controlled
and therefore posed no threat to the established order. Through a close
analysis of many press photographs, he remarks:

The determined efforts of the white press to frame the civil

rights movement as nonthreatening had the collateral result of
casting blacks in roles of limited power. With great regularity,
iconic photographs show white actors exercising power over
blacks.81

The mainstream media shaped the perception of the Civil Rights move-
ment and fashioned the historical narrative of the period, subduing the
voices and the courage of African-American activists who braved the
segregationists.
The Panthers relinquished the nonviolent model of the early civil
rights fighters and devised an empowering model of activism that, how-
ever, had a countereffect as it produced a backlash of fear. The media
exposed Newton as a visual and oral trope for African-American mili-
tancy, stereotyping his political stance into a few clichés and catchphras-
es that neither reflected the content of his speeches nor hinted at the
achievements of his community programs. Newton was one of the fiery
orators in the Black Panther Party, coining the term “pig” in reference
to the police, thus displaying his defiant behavior toward authority sym-
bols.82 He wrote a series of articles published in Black Panther, the party’s
weekly newspaper illustrated and designed by Emory Douglas, where he
defined a pig as “a low natured beast that has no regard for law, justice,
or the rights of people; a creature that bites the hands that feed it, a
foul, depraved traducer, usually found masquerading as the victim of an
unprovoked attack.”83
Smith’s long monologue in the film/play is based on a variety of
interviews and writings, most of which were edited by Toni Morrison into
a book entitled To Die for the People.84 Words humanize the character of
Newton, conveying his doubts and portraying him as a sensitive character
in counterpoint to the visuals which reify his figure. The interplay of the
visual and the verbal in the film is not balanced; the images projected in
the background compete with Smith’s speech delivered in the foreground.
Stereotypes create a visual and imaginary barrier that separates the spoken

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 Media and Race / 101

words from the voice delivering them. Smith impersonates a fiery Newton
who repeatedly levels criticism at a racist visual culture, which shapes the
black people into stereotypes as exemplified by the character of Sambo,
the “dimwitted, gullible, helpless African American boy, a stock character
in much of nineteenth century literary tradition,”85 whose image served
to reinforce assumptions of white superiority in children’s books. Smith
draws on humor when retracing Newton’s childhood memories: Newton
“took his shoe off and threw it at the instructor” who was reading a book
about Sambo in class, which had become an unbearable strain for the
child. The anecdote triggers laughter among the audience, who are both
amused and vicariously empowered by the memory of a child’s rebellion.
A few pages taken from an illustrated children’s version of Helen Banner-
man’s Story of Little Black Sambo (1899) are enlarged and projected in the
background, allowing the viewers to look at them through Newton’s eyes
and to feel the humiliation produced by the Sambo personality.
The one-man show adapted into a Spike Lee Joint transforms the
message of Roger Guenveur Smith: while the comedian endeavors to por-
tray Huey P. Newton as an ambiguous character, Spike Lee sheds light on
the ideological power of stereotypes to control the political through the
visual. Unlike the photographs studied by Hariman and Lucaites in No
Caption Needed, which they argue contribute to enriching the democratic
debate by nurturing civic identity in American society, the photographs
of the Panthers engender a feeling of exclusion rather than inclusion,
positing the color line informs the relationship between the spectator
and the construction of blackness on screen. Berger refers to Dorothea
Lange’s “Migrant Mother” photograph to point out that the racial dimen-
sion needs be erased for visuals to reach an iconic status. He distinguishes
“lessons of universal suffering (read from white bodies) [that] were not to
be confused with racialized narratives of suffering (read from the bodies
of nonwhites),”86 which might account for the limited power of the civil
rights photographs.
The Panthers obviously did not address crossover audiences while
promoting a nationalist message, which often displayed Afrocentric cul-
tural symbols. The photographs, which signified a betrayal from the
dominant perspective articulated by the media, are interpreted as tools
of empowerment when remediated by Spike Lee. The film captures the
complicity between the comedian and his audience, which does not easily
extend beyond the television screen. Newton embodies a radical stand
that cannot be incorporated in a colorblind rhetoric—contrary to such
figures as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, who represent “floating

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signifiers” that can be appropriated in various discourses.87 Political scien-

tist Andrew Hacker argues that Martin Luther King’s nonviolent, integra-
tionist stance made him an acceptable black figure in mainstream society
and his memory is exploited in an array of contradictory narratives.88
Conversely, the aggressive image of an armed Newton compromises his
integration in America’s visual democracy. Spike Lee, however, enhances
the political and symbolical role he played for the African-American com-
munity through A Huey P. Newton Story. Newton provided an empow-
ering figure for African Americans who looked at him as a model of
resistance to the intricate and demeaning rules of white power. Through
Smith’s portrayal of Newton as an older figure, who is physically weakened
by the use of drugs, Lee presents the fight he was engaged in as self-de-
structive. The dark stage and the prison-like setting of the play turn him
into a martyr, whose memory Lee strives to recover.
Focusing on such controversial figures as Jim Brown and Huey P.
Newton, the filmmaker strives to pinpoint the negative impact of the
media, which frame the racial debate in moral terms as illustrated by the
images of Katrina. Excluded from visual democracy are icons of Black
Nationalism—unless they support a marketing strategy in a capitalist
society.

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 CHAPTER 4

The Legacy of Black Nationalism

Culture and Politics

The commercial success of She’s Gotta Have it (1986) permitted Spike

Lee to found his own film production company—40 Acres and a Mule
Filmworks, which partly ensures his economic and artistic independence.
Lee further increased his financial clout by developing Spike DDB, an
advertising agency dedicated to the production of promotional videos
for the music industry and multinational corporations like Nike, PepsiCo,
and General Motors. Film historian Andrew Dewaard contends that Lee
has to negotiate the corporate logic of Hollywood to secure funding for
his films. Using his celebrity status and his name as a brand which can
be exploited both to target a specific audience and to impose his choices
as an auteur, Lee’s commercial endeavors pursue a “pragmatic method
of African-American empowerment through free-enterprise economics”
which Dewaard does not view in a negative light.1 The scholar explains
that the success of a film does not rely on its aesthetic qualities only; it also
depends on its economic marketing. While this path of reasoning may be
adapted to the constraints which the filmmaker has to face as a minority
director in Hollywood, it nonetheless raises questions and doubts as to
the sincerity of his political commitment to documentary filmmaking.
The 40 Acres and a Mule enterprise symbolizes Lee’s viewpoint that
African-American advancement relies on economic power and ownership,
for the phrase itself refers to a policy brought in by General William
Sherman in 1865, which granted land plots for newly freed slaves to culti-
vate. The order was revoked after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, putting
an end to redistribution and fueling resentment among the emancipated
slaves, who were thereby deprived of the means to self-reliance. The 40
Acres and a Mule phrase has since then signified the federal government’s
failure to pay compensation,2 which Black Nationalists Marcus Garvey,

103

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Malcolm X, Elijah Mohammed, and Louis Farrakhan interpreted as an

icon of betrayal when calling for reparation.3 African-American histo-
ry scholar Manning Marable similarly associates compensation with the
issue of reparation, which he yet defines more broadly when observing
that “the demand for reparation is not fundamentally about the money,”4
arguing instead that reparation requires the integration of black voices in
the nation’s historical narrative—“a history that more accurately presents
the authentic story of black people from their own point of view, as they
lived it.”5 The 40 Acres and a Mule phrase emphasizes both the historical
underpinning of Spike Lee’s filmmaking and his commitment to retrieving
the message of Black Nationalism.
Malcolm X defined Black Nationalism in a speech he delivered in
Cleveland, Ohio, on April 3, 1963, which is referred to as “The Ballot or
the Bullet.” Viewing American democracy as “disguised hypocrisy” which
did not offer the same opportunities to blacks and whites, Malcolm X
considered it was necessary for African-American communities to exert
political control at a local level to thrive economically. As the leader of
Black Power, he drew attention to the interwoven notions of self-reliance
and self-determination, which should be developed in relation to a pro-
gram of economic advancement positioning African Americans as active
consumers and producers within their neighborhoods. He advocated the
empowerment of African Americans through economic initiatives that
would permit self-reliance to blossom on individual and collective levels:

The economic philosophy of Black Nationalism is pure and

simple. It only means that we should control the economy of
our community. Why should white people be running all the
stores in our community? Why should white people be running
the banks of our community? Why should the economy of
our community be in the hands of the white man? Why? If a
black man can’t move his store into a white community, you
tell me why a white man should move his store into a black
community. The philosophy of Black Nationalism involves a
re-education program in the black community in regards to
economics. Our people have to be made to see that any time
you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in
a community where you don’t live, the community where you
live will get poorer and poorer, and the community where you
spend your money will get richer and richer.6

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 The Legacy of Black Nationalism / 105

In this extract, Malcolm X accuses the white power structure of maintain-

ing a system of exploitation that victimizes blacks, denying them equal
opportunities in all fields—from education to jobs and politics. His goal
was to empower African-American communities economically to liber-
ate them from white domination, which subjected African Americans
to abuse and intimidation. Drawing on the theoretical underpinning
of decolonization, including Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth,
which opposes capitalist imperialism to socialism while advocating a “new
humanism,”7 Malcolm X called for a black cultural revolution to transform
individual consciousness. After he returned from his 1964 tour in West
Africa, the leader gave his first speech on behalf of the new Organization
of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) which he had founded in Ghana. His
address fostered awareness of a distinct black culture developed through a
common racial history: “We must recapture our heritage and our identity
if we are ever to liberate ourselves from the bonds of white supremacy
[. . .] We must launch a cultural revolution to unbrainwash an entire
people.”8
References to icons of the black revolutionary tradition are sprinkled
throughout Spike Lee’s films, which articulate a politics of identity that
foregrounds the assertion of self-pride and economic empowerment. His
films are imbued with black power sentiment, which he puts forth when
plumbing the past in search of hidden stories that testify to the Afri-
can-Americans’ active role in shaping American society and culture. His
documentaries unfold a biographical vein, galvanizing tales of resilience
about African Americans fighting injustice. Rather than focus on Martin
Luther King, Jr., whose legacy of nonviolence has been hailed by white
America, Spike Lee sheds light on the revolutionary voices of nationalist
figures Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton, whose radical message contin-
ues to be subdued and distorted. When making biographical films that
underscore the struggles the two leaders went through in order to gain
a political voice in American society, the filmmaker broaches the race
problem and pinpoints continuities between present and past discrimi-
natory practices.
Lee endeavors to have the Black Nationalists’ legacy acknowledged
by recounting the political fights their leaders carried on, foregrounding
their economic views and the sense of cultural pride they radiated with.
Through a study of the ideological impact of integration on black mid-
dle-class culture, Charles T. Banner-Haley is able to demonstrate that Lee’s
public recognition was linked to the specific context of the 1980s and

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90s, marked by a conservative shift on the political level and a revival of

racial consciousness in the fields of arts and culture: “The absorption by
the black middle-class of cultural nationalism and black pride coexist-
ed reasonably with America’s increased awareness of and willingness to
accept ethnic culture.”9 Neither did the nationalist creed permeating the
semiotic discourse of Lee’s films conflict with the integrationist stance of
the African-American middle-class audience, nor did the cultural identity
celebrated by Black Nationalist icons betray the rising black bourgeoisie
values. The African-American audience endorsed Lee’s engagement with
racial politics, which suggests that his pragmatic approach to economic
empowerment was in line with the popular view.
Whether he recounts the exceptional sport career of Jim Brown or
retraces the music and business adventures of Michael Jackson, Spike
Lee extols the skills and achievements of the characters he portrays. The
filmmaker turns ordinary individuals into heroes of daily life by giving
prominence to their exceptional stories and unknown talents in If God
Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise. Watching his documentaries turns
out to be empowering viewing experiences insofar as they spotlight the
success of resilient African-American figures whose portrayal is inspir-
ing. However, the focus on notable African Americans who have become
billionaires in the entertainment industry or in the corporate sector (like
Lee himself) produces a skewed vision, for the accomplishments of a
few have neither lessened the levels of poverty nor tempered inequality
among African Americans.10 Social and economic injustice continues to
prevail over everyday life inside the United States, marginalizing African
Americans from the mainstream. In an attempt to redress the negative ste-
reotypes embedded in the media representations of blackness, Lee would
rather shed light on the positive aspects of black culture than examine the
role of structured race and class inequalities in hampering social progress.

Musical Resilience and Creativity

Malcolm X was concerned with raising awareness of a distinct cultural

heritage among African Americans by lauding the unique achievements
of writers and musicians whose creativity testifies to the richness of black
culture. In the 1960s, the emergence of soul music reflected the mood of
resistance and self-determination that permeated Black Nationalism with
James Brown singing lyrics of defiance—“We’d rather die on our feet, than
keep livin’ on our knees.”11 Spike Lee draws on the black musical heri-

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tage to transform the spectator’s viewing experience into empowerment,

using jazz songs to create a sense of solidarity beyond screen space at
the beginning of When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Quite
significantly, the series begins with African drumbeats preceding a mon-
tage of images rummaging through the past of New Orleans, with Louis
Armstrong’s voice nostalgically asking “Do You Know What it is to Miss
New Orleans?” Lee offers a path to transcend the traumatizing experi-
ence of Katrina, which the government’s mishandling only made worse,
by reviving New Orleans’ energizing cultural life. The film’s musical score
further dramatizes the documentary as it arouses empathy and sympathy,
allowing the viewers “to feel the feelings of others.”12
Spike Lee’s New Orleans documentaries convey the attachment that
the city inspires to most African Americans across the United States. New
Orleans has retained an ethnic character that pervades its cultural life
because ancestral cultural traditions survived there,13 which Lee empha-
sizes by lingering on such symbolic sites of memory as Congo Square.
The filmmaker identifies the square where the slaves could practice their
bambula beats as central to the development of African-American musi-
cal forms. The bambula beats are evocative of the African heartbeats,
highlighting that New Orleans occupies a special place in the history
of African-American culture, for the city’s local customs permitted the
slaves to develop and to preserve some rituals [WTLB, Act 3, 37:00].
African-American music and dance traditions betray the influence of their
ancestors’ original practices. Historian Michael E. Crutcher, Jr., recalls that
the Congo Circus became the setting of a seasonal attraction around 1812.
The slaves were allowed to gather and perform their languages, dances,
and instruments there, which made it “a place of active resistance to the
dominant slave society.”14 Spike Lee dwells on Congo Square as a site of
memory, which should instil pride and confidence among the members
of the African-American community in New Orleans and beyond. Lee
cuts from Congo Square to paintings that illustrate what Congo Square
might have looked like, inviting African Americans to look back at the
past to project themselves into the future.
The documentarian uses music to design a path for regeneration
amidst the debris. Lee symbolically offers his film as a tribute to the dead
of New Orleans, allowing the viewers to share in the mourning process
through the ceremonies recorded by the handheld cameras and broad-
cast on television. The fourth and final act of When the Levees Broke:
A Requiem in Four Acts opens with the Hot 8 Brass Band walking in
front of a horse-drawn hearse carrying a coffin labeled “Katrina” through

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Figure 4.1. Spike Lee marks his engagement visually by accompanying his char-
acters in the derelict city, which Terrence Blanchard dramatizes by filling the
abandoned streets with the music of his trumpet in When the Levees Broke: A
Requiem in Four Acts. Courtesy of Photofest

a landscape of debris. The slow music of the beginning turns into an

upbeat, joyful composition by the end of the act—as is the tradition in
New Orleans funeral parades that celebrate the departure of the dead
and the happy memories of the past. Historian Richard Mizelle, Jr., com-
ments on the funeral tradition in New Orleans as a metaphor and a
ritual that help understand the culture of resilience that characterizes its
inhabitants:

The history and culture of New Orleans is also closely linked

with the jazz funeral, a unique and ritualized ceremony of
mourning and celebration. The process of celebration and
rejuvenation in a jazz funeral is called the “second line,” and
I use this term as a model for how we can apply the lessons
of Katrina to bring change. The jazz funeral is both a met-
aphor for dealing with the losses caused by Katrina and a
window into the culture of New Orleans. Jazz funerals offer

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 The Legacy of Black Nationalism / 109

a way of understanding the psychological and physical pain

of bereavement in New Orleans and provide a model for the
regeneration of the city.15

Lee revives New Orleans’ energizing cultural life through the funeral pro-
cessions he follows, using the colorful and musical images of the local tra-
dition to connote the possibilities of a new start.16 The filmmaker exploits
the viewing experience offered by the documentary to provide comfort
and to recreate the community bond among African Americans whose
roots are symbolized by local musical traditions. By filming the processions
surrounding a coffin called Katrina, Lee invites a community of viewers to
gather and to identify with the mourners. He explores the cultural web of
the city to reconstruct a broken community bond among African Amer-
icans who sometimes decided never to return to the city that abandoned
them [WTLB, Act 3, 47:00]—either they had no home to go back to and
the city’s reconstruction was too slow to welcome them back, or they dis-
covered new horizons for themselves and their children after evacuation.
The third act of When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
starts with a prayer by Audrey Mason, indicating that the film endeavors
to find a path of healing. Sitting with her eyes closed in the middle of the
wood frame used to characterize her as a Madonna in a painted portrait,
she thanks the Lord for leading her through the troubled water, recalling
faith supported her as it did her ancestors: “Father, as we waded through
the waters, my mind thought about the song that my ancestors used, what
I was raised upon. [. . .] I want to thank you for bringing us through
that water.” She performs her prayer in front of the camera, sharing an
intimate and private moment with the audience whom she addresses. Her
comforting words and soft tone of voice provide solace that contrast with
the dramatic violence of the media coverage cited in the documentary.
After telling the stories of the dead in the first two episodes of When the
Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Lee offers testimonies about indi-
vidual survival in New Orleans, connecting the present plight to that of
the past. Lee envisions the rebirth of New Orleans through its ties with
the musical culture that thrived there, allowing African-American singers
and jazz players to become renowned across the world. Music helped
them resist subjugation and conquer space, which Lee tries to pursue
when filming the bands playing through the streets and filling the city
with their musical thrills.
Although Lee conveys solace through the musical score and the
funeral processions he follows with a handheld camera, Douglas Brinkley

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suggests that he might be misleading when contending that New Orleans

could be reborn through clinching to its jazz traditions, which social his-
torians trace to the large percentage of poor African Americans trying to
scrape a living in the city. Brinkley explains that the past of the city should
not be romanticized because it does not help New Orleanians project a
different future, “except as a means of keeping things, right or wrong,
the same.”17 By reviving the musical culture and the racial history of New
Orleans, Lee imparts to the film a “powerfully local flavour,”18 a hint of
exoticism and nostalgia that may sound counterproductive, putting forth
“images of unending oppression and poverty amid ameliorative musical
innovations.”19 Although he returns to New Orleans history and culture
to rebuild a positive image of African Americans whom the media ste-
reotyped negatively as looters, he also romanticizes the conditions under
which the poor survived in the city. It seems that the pull of the Big Easy
creates a mythological framework that challenges the political conscious-
ness he strives to awaken. Lee views the past of New Orleans through
rose-tinted glasses, prompting New Orleans residents to return to the city
that saw the birth of African-American jazz music before its growth into
a worldwide phenomenon.
Music is integrated into the fabric of Lee’s films, which is further
illustrated by the music videos he directed for African-American singers,
underlining the Black Nationalist roots of Tracy Chapman’s political and
musical engagement in the “Born to Fight” video: the short film cuts
from a boxing ring, where the woman sings her song and plays the guitar,
to archival footage of the Civil Rights movement—including marches,
speeches by Malcolm X, pictures of Rosa Parks and black-and-white foot-
age of boxing matches. The visuals thereby transform the activist singer
into an icon of collective fight, the spirit of which she captures through
the lyrics of her song. The video made for the rap band Public Enemy uses
the streets of Brooklyn as a setting for a crowd of marchers demonstrating
to the motto of “Fight the Power.” The film starts with archival footage of
the 1963 march on Washington, drawing a political link between the orig-
inal Civil Rights movement and its radicalization through Black Power.
Dancers are dressed in black, visually echoing the outfit of the Panthers,
whereas the singers stand among the crowd, posing as urban icons of
ghetto culture and modern civil rights fighters.
The music videos are conceived so as to promote the songs and
their interpreters, which makes Lee less critical in his latest documentary
dedicated to Michael Jackson. Bad 25 resembles a music video rather than
a documentary insofar as it is devoted to reconstructing the public perso-

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 The Legacy of Black Nationalism / 111

na of Michael Jackson. The film celebrates Jackson’s musical and artistic

creativity by dwelling on the conception of the songs and the visuals elab-
orated with them: Lee invites choreographers to analyze Jackson’s dance
moves and urges director Martin Scorsese to comment on the technical
details of his making the promotional video for “Bad.” Eschewing all the
controversies the singer was implied in, Lee draws an idealized figure
of the pop star. According to the film’s narrative, the persecuting media
victimized Michael Jackson and deprived him of a voice to defend him-
self. His success was sacrificed for the scandals that boosted the sales of
tabloids. Delving into the stories behind the songs, which his interviewees
nostalgically relate, Lee romanticizes the singer’s career, trying to capture
the mystifying power of the star. Quite significantly, Michael Jackson’s
growing talent among the Jackson Five is summarized in an embedded
sequence, which allows Lee to pinpoint Michael’s original dance steps. Lee
presented the film as “a love letter” to Michael Jackson, celebrating the 25th
anniversary of the “Bad” album (1987).20 Spike Lee’s paradoxical stance
as to the legacy of Black Nationalism becomes obvious when he claims
that Michael Jackson was and remains an icon of African-American cul-
ture. Although the star became a billionaire in the entertainment industry
through sheer hard work, clearly posing as an African-American singer
with an Afro haircut in the 1970s, Michael Jackson claimed neither his
African roots nor his masculinity as a star. Had Lee started the film with
the “Thriller” album (1982), which was an even bigger hit on the front of
pop music, he would have spotlighted Jackson’s physical transformation
and tarnished the portrayal of him as an icon of black pride.

The Expression of Black Pride

Spike Lee’s documentaries shed light on individual paths of resistance

through biographical narratives that pinpoint qualities building up a sense
of black pride. Not only does A Huey P. Newton Story represent an exam-
ple of cultural creativity which can be shared and promoted through the
film based on Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-man show, but the double
narrative strand (film/show) allows the Panthers’ message to be remediat-
ed and transmitted to another generation. Spike Lee and Roger Guenveur
Smith combine their arts to help spread the political message of Huey P.
Newton: the live performance is embedded in the film’s narrative, which
strengthens the political discourse fashioned by the Black Panthers’ leader.
The actor sits at the center of the stage, drawing attention to the complicity

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between himself and the audience, whom he addresses directly when

interpreting the birth of “The Ten Points” program.21 The mise en scène
enhances the central role of Newton in the history of the party, reflecting
the Panthers’ vital function within the African-American community. The
political and economic theoretical framework of the Panthers’ project is
embodied by the character of Newton in the play and given more power
by the visuals associated with the words he utters. As he expands on the
Marxist-Leninist line of the Party, pondering on the meaning of the words
he manipulates, the footage projected behind his back depicts a female
secretary typing up the revisions he demands, replacing the phrase “the
white man” by “the capitalist.”22 The words selected underline the link
between racial oppression and capitalism, which pinpoints the ideological
legacy of Malcolm X on the Panthers. A Huey P. Newton Story does not
silence the Panthers’ revolutionary message and defiant rhetoric, which
echoes Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton’s Black Power, The
Politics of Liberation in America. The book provided the political frame-
work behind the struggle that aimed at liberating black people from white
oppression in America and throughout the world; the authors argued
that racism was deeply linked to the capitalist economic model and to
America’s political institutions.23 Calling for revolution when interpreting
Newton on stage, Smith reactualizes this political discourse.
Lee includes a few outside shots of homeless people when the char-
acter defines point number 4 as a call for “decent housing,” thereby indi-
cating that Newton’s theories are inspired by the experience of African
Americans on the street. As the film cuts to footage of anti-war demon-
strations, hinting at the involvement of the Panthers along with peace
activists, Smith introduces point number 6 demanding “exemption from
military service.” His voice mixes with the hissing and booming sounds of
bombs dropped in Vietnam whereas archival footage depicts the violence
perpetrated by American soldiers carrying out their “search-and-find”
missions. Lee reinforces Newton’s message through the insertion of visuals
that compare the Vietnamese to the African Americans, suggesting they
are facing the same enemy: be they soldiers in Vietnam or police officers
on the domestic front, Americans in uniform use brutality in order to
impose their domination. Quite interestingly, the audience applauds when
the character accuses the police of murdering African Americans, which
Lee illustrates with a still photograph of a coffin carried by five Panthers
[11:00]. The camera zooms out of the shot, which once again disrupts
the visual flow of the show: Lee cuts from Smith’s figure to the records
of the past as though he was digging up repressed memories. It is quite

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 The Legacy of Black Nationalism / 113

difficult to know whether the audience claps in response to the denunci-

ations of police brutality against the Panthers, including the murders of
Bobby Hutton (1968) and Fred Hampton (1969), or whether they react
to a situation which they feel still affects them.
Smith ends the enumeration of the program with a pun on the word
justice, which he distorts into “just us,” to argue that a penitentiary is a
symbol for the African-Americans’ martyrdom.24 Such jokes continuously
crop up in the show, toning down the tragic overtones of the recounted
stories and conveying a sense of black humor. Laughter is used a form
of resistance to counter the ideological slant of the “white oppressor.”
Through the use of puns and anecdotes, the speaker unveils the ideolog-
ical framework linking language and power.25 For example, he criticizes
the recurrent use of the word “infiltration” by J. Edgar Hoover in the
thousand-page FBI files devoted to his name, explaining that the Black
Panthers’ activists could not really “infiltrate” the black neighborhoods
from which they originated. To Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin,
laughter has a social significance in so far as it is “directed toward some-
thing higher—toward a shift of authorities and truths, a shift of world
orders.”26 Smith and Lee exacerbate the incipient irony of Newton’s writ-
ings, using laughter as a strategy of resistance “in the process of becoming
free.”27 They endeavor to recover Newton’s original voice in dry remarks,
using sports as an example of racial discrimination:

I was reading a news item just the other day about this guy,
Jimmy the Greek, sports broadcaster, on one of these televi-
sion networks. And he was fired from his network position
because allegedly he said that black people are intellectually
inferior because we are athletically superior. But he did not say
that. What he said was that black people, if given the chance,
can do anything we want in this society, even play golf and
tennis. [28:00]

The character of Newton is framed by a medley of voices emerging from the

past, heard in voice-over or speaking in archival television footage, drawing
a contradictory portrait of him as either a hero or a villain. Smith remains
quiet during the sequence, yet his body moves as though each word was
like a knife thrust in his body and torturing his mind [58:30]. The film
frames Newton as a martyr, intensifying the gap between an isolated man
on stage and the public portrayal of him in the archival footage: Smith’s
physical portrayal of Newton as a fidgety character, whose chain-smoking

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betrays an addiction to drugs, suggests the destructive elements of the

fight he physically and mentally committed himself to. The archival mate-
rial included in the film creates a dialogic exchange around the figure of
Newton, introducing complexity into his shady characterization.
Spike Lee uses Smith’s show to recover Huey P. Newton’s political
message, which had been distorted into a threat by J. Edgar Hoover, who
launched COINTELPRO in 1967, a secret program of political repression,
the purpose of which was “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or
otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalists, hate-type organ-
izations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership and
supporters.”28 The FBI’s campaign intensified in 1969, sending numerous
Black Panthers into jail, forcing some into exile and causing others to
be killed.29 Lee enhances Newton’s views on revolution by projecting an
enlargement of the iconic photograph that depicted him as a modern-day
African-American warrior, posing with Zulu shields, rifle, and spear. The
fundraiser poster appears in the background as the character comments
on the notion of revolution, drawing attention to the African tools used
to symbolize the Panthers’ fight:

Black Panther Party for Self Defense was just the vanguard
of the revolution. We’re like the tip of the spear, we make the
first impact but the real damage is done by the people cause
they’re the ones that make the revolution—they’re like the butt
of the spear, they make the real penetration. See, without the
butt penetration there’s no more danger than with a toothpick.30

The film creates a link between the words and the visuals associated with
them: the spear stands for the violence of the war to be waged by Afri-
can Americans if they want true and lasting social change in America.
Although he repudiated cultural nationalists, including U.S. Black People’s
leader Maulana Karenga,31 Newton himself took advantage of the appeal
generated by African symbols, yet openly criticizing an attitude which
he branded “pork chop nationalism,”32 for he considered the Afrocentric
trend was counterrevolutionary.33 The portrait showing Newton dressed
in Panther regalia, armed and seated in a wicker chair, illustrates the
contradictory nature of the man: even though he did not endorse Afro-
centric views, he borrowed from Afrocentric imagery and symbolism to
visually define the Panthers.
A Huey P. Newton Story testifies to Spike Lee’s commitment to Black
Nationalism, for he tries to magnify the message embodied by the Pan-

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thers rather than discredit it. However, the filmmaker also directed tel-
evision commercials for the U.S. Navy when recruits fell short of 7,000
men in 1999.34 No doubt the U.S. Navy capitalized on Lee’s popularity
to draw more young African-American males in its ranks. According to
political scientist Melissa T. Brown, the five commercials Lee directed
for the U.S. Navy promoted different aspects of military life as indicated
by their respective titles (“Travel,” “Homecoming,” “Seals,” “Education,”
“Band”).35 Ironically enough, these short films were broadcast on televi-
sion at about the same time as A Huey P. Newton Story (2001), which leads
us to question Lee’s commitment to Black Nationalism. The documentary
and the commercials cannot be reconciled since they endorse antithetical
messages. Lee has managed to straddle the oppositions between his com-
mercial works and his committed films by separating his artistic activi-
ties from his advertising contracts through the creation of two distinct
companies: 40 Acres and a Mule and Spike DDB are not dedicated to the
same purposes. However, the twofold career of the filmmaker blurs and
compromises the racial consciousness he strives to awaken in his films,
reducing Black Nationalism to an economic stance promoting the values
of the black bourgeoisie.
Lee’s advertising company’s website features a promotional vid-
eo using Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech as a voice-over
in a General Motors and Chevrolet campaign,36 comprising a four-city
tour organized to celebrate the unveiling of the Martin Luther King, Jr.,
National Memorial in Washington DC on August 28, 2011. The campaign
espouses Martin Luther King’s narrative of a beloved community, gather-
ing black and white people from all walks of life as “brothers and sisters”
around a table that stretches from the Atlantic beaches to Washington
DC. The table spreads across the national landscape, weaving its way
through the ruined quarters of broken houses in New Orleans, the rural
communities of the countryside, the peace and quiet of suburbs outside
the city centers and the main street in the capital city. The visuals connote
an idealized view of American society, where the American dream has
become reality for all.
While Lee’s films attempt to recuperate the legacy of Black National-
ist figures like Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton, whose subversive revolu-
tionary discourse he endeavors to have acknowledged in the history of the
nation, his contribution to the General Motors and Chevrolet campaigns
reinforces the “Great Man” myth theorized by Clayborne Carson, which
underlines the key role of great historical figures such as Martin Luther
King while overshadowing local community involvement in bringing

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forth change.37 Four Little Girls and A Huey P. Newton Story offer insight
into the ideological discursive framework of the civil rights fight whereas
the “table of brotherhood project” initiated by the automobile industry
reinforces the myth of a colorblind nation, which does not measure up to
the facts mentioned in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.
Spike Lee remorselessly sells African-American culture in his adver-
tising spots, promoting the image and the values of the black bourgeoisie
when shooting promotional videos for Jaguar to widen the appeal of the
brand. The short film he directed for Jaguar explicitly taps African-Amer-
ican customers—dubbed the “new jag generation,”38 embodied by a young
man who travels by taxi from London airport to Jaguar headquarters to
place an order for the new X-type Jaguar car. Dolly shots convey Spike
Lee’s signature, enhancing the proud composure of the man who is then
delivered the brand new car by the English engineers outside his brown-
stone apartment in trendy Harlem. Flattering though the portrait might
be, it produces mystification while dressing up American society into
a multicultural environment which fits the idealized world of corporate
advertising. Cultural critic Paul Gilroy argues that corporations exploit
“the perfected, invulnerable male body that has become the standard
currency of black popular culture”39 and contends that Lee himself con-
tributed to shaping this climate. The beautiful black bodies of athletes
and actors are displayed as signifiers of prestige, blurring the historical
boundaries between race and class. The Jaguar promotional video uses
an ironic voice-over, which prompts the viewer to “imagine” he was in
the shoes of actor Preston Greenwood, ironically avowing most African
Americans do not have the money to buy Jaguar luxury cars. The short
film depicts an idealized version of multiculturalism, reinforcing the raci-
ological constructions of blackness. The glamourized male body draws on
the aura of black physical prowess, which Gilroy traces to Leni Riefen-
stahl’s filmic aestheticized look at Jesse Owens’s body in Olympia (1938).40
Lee’s commercial engagements conflict with the political stance he
advocates through his committed documentaries insofar as they explicitly
deny the race problematic. The speech he gave at Morehouse College at
the launch of the Chevrolet sponsored “Table of Brotherhood Tour” con-
veys his belief in education as the great equalizer, denying the differences
he nonetheless observed when focusing on education and crime in New
Orleans during the making of If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise:

I am happy to be here at Morehouse [College]. We should

remember that Dr. King was a Morehouse man and so was his

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father, Daddy King. We are talking about a great tradition of

education. We as black people have gotten away from education.
Our ancestors worked from can’t see in the morning to can’t
see at night knowing that one day education would be the
way to get us out of the bondage of slavery. We knew [then]
education was the vehicle to get us to where we need to be.
We have gone wayward. We live in a world today where if you
are an intelligent young black kid, who speaks ‘correct’ English,
that you were chastised as a white girl, white boy, Oreo [or]
sellout. I think hope has a lot to do with this. We live in the
world where education is not something to be proud of. We
have to include hip-hop, not all hip-hop, the music video and
the lyrics . . . all of this stuff is crazy. We have a lot of black
folks who pray before the pulpit of the almighty dollar and
will put their mother on the corner for a dollar bill. All they
care about is making money, no matter who it hurts. That’s
the kind of thinking that will be our deaths.41

Lee’s comments are surprising as they deny the existing structural barriers
on the way to self-accomplishment. In If God Is Willing and Da Creek
Don’t Rise, Lee examines the school system and weaves critical distance
into the presentation made by Paul Vallas, superintendent of the Recovery
School District of Louisiana, as he expresses in a face-to-face discussion
his views of education and the purposes of the reforms he enforced to res-
cue the school system of New Orleans.42 The film first exposes the political
reasoning behind the reforms by introducing the authorities’ arguments:
Paul Vallas associates such words as “superior,” “best,” “brightest,” “elite”
with the notion of “charter schools,” which obviously represent the path he
and Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco chose to rejuvenate the school
system.43 During Vallas’s interview, the film cuts to snapshots taken in
the classroom and focusing on students and their teachers, illustrating
the gap between them. Dynamic and bright as they might be, the young
teachers hired by the school boards may find it hard to connect with
students whom Eddie Compass characterizes as “traumatized by Katrina.”
The bright picture conveyed by Paul Vallas’s words does not seem to trans-
late into convincing photographs—some students hold their head in their
hands and are photographed from behind a grid that connotes impris-
onment; the white teachers speak from a dominating position, towering
over their group of black students. Pauline Lipman analyzes the teachers’
“ideological dispositions” as a barrier which may be erected on the path

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to educational success for African-American students who feel alienated

from these young teachers coming from outside the city and representing
a social status they are not familiar with.44
Spike Lee confronts the theoretical model to its impact on the com-
munity by focusing on the only school that reopened in the Lower Ninth
Ward—the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School, which stands as a
symbol of the enduring civil rights fight. Lee recounts how the school was
reopened through a dual interview with school principal Dr. Roche-Hicks
and community organizer Tanya Harris, whose success is presented as the
result of community action, with photographs depicting citizens’ collective
actions and solidarity among the debris which they helped to clean. Tanya
Harris explains that Mrs Doris Roche-Hicks “had” to go charter to be able
to re-open the school, which suggests that the money made available to
go charter created forced choice; parents and community members were
pressured to reopen the schools as charters. The film cuts to archival
footage of Barack Obama’s visit to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Char-
ter School; while his presence may be flattering and supportive, it does
not question the long-term effect of the experiment. The citizens inter-
viewed voice a critical perspective, which Lee edits together into a didactic
demonstration pinpointing the shortcomings of the reform. Working as
a researcher in sociology, the filmmaker examines whose interests these
policies serve, their social implications, and their meanings for students
in New Orleans. The ideological stance he embodies through the New
Orleans nonfiction series strikingly contrasts with the economic strategies
he adopts in the business of making films.
The discrepancy between Lee’s political and economic discourse is
all the more disturbing, for he explicitly contributes to celebrating the
“almighty dollar” by designing sneakers and watches for corporations
that exploit his name to boost their sales. He takes part in the develop-
ment of a consumer culture by targeting the young generation through
brand sneakers, which he promotes by exploiting the popularity of Afri-
can-American celebrities.45 Charles T. Banner-Haley examines Spike Lee’s
Nike and Levis commercials as creative works that were somewhat “sub-
versive, deconstructing the whole world of advertising in an attempt to
reach the black masses while also promoting images of cultural plural-
ism.”46 Assuming the role of a go-between that has access to corporate
money and to the African-American consumers, the filmmaker was and
is still able to negotiate profitable contrasts with brands and corporations
that tap into the niche market. The ads may be seen as provocative and
challenging since they depict African-American figures in positions of

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power; however, the consumerist message they put across is hardly sub-
versive. A case in point is the reference to basketball, which has marked
Spike Lee’s advertising debuts.

Sports: The Path to Success

Lee created his own advertising company Spike DDB in 1997 after he
released several commercials staging Michael Jordan for the promotion of
Nike shoes.47 According to sociologists Brian Wilson and Robert Sparks,
the association of the increasingly popular filmmaker with the basketball
star played a key role in developing the commercial overtones of sports
culture:

While early Nike ads (mid-late 1980s) showed the young “Air”
Jordan as a gravity-defying slam dunk artist in more conven-
tional (but still effective) athletic apparel commercial formats, it
was his 1991 association with filmmaker Spike Lee that launched
Jordan and Nike well beyond the sport and into mainstream
culture. [. . .] It was Spike Lee’s elevation of “style” within and
deriving from his films such as Do the Right Thing [. . .] that
confirmed the marketing genius of Jordan-Lee ads for Nike.48

Not only was the relationship profitable to Spike Lee and Michael Jor-
dan, but it also helped the brand gain worldwide appeal, influencing pat-
terns of consumption and behavior among the youth. Do the Right Thing
depicts a consumer culture that spread to the streets and shaped both
dress codes and styles of behavior. Lee’s advertisements contributed to
the development of commercial sporting culture, which turned basketball
into a commodity spectacle dominated by a profit-driven corporatization
of sports. His Nike commercials were accused of promoting consumer
values instead of self-esteem and hard work, reducing athletic abilities to
the consumer’s power to purchase trendy Jordan sneakers and equating
the athlete’s image with the commodities that he markets.49
Lee directed seven original commercial films in the early 1990s
promoting Nike as an innovative brand endorsed by sport stars; the
ads’ appealing visual and oral comic effect derives from the opposition
between the short filmmaker, who appears in the guise of Mars Black-
mon from She’s Gotta Have it (1986), a character who parodies the look
and style of urban black youths by wearing oversized glasses and a gold

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necklace in the shape of capital letters spelling his name around his neck,
and the tall, towering figure of Michael Jordan. Blackmon’s loquacious-
ness contrasts with Jordan’s laconic style, whose athletic performing body
may be “in motion but speechless” as noticed by Carrington.50 A close
reading of African American Icons of Sport, Triumph, Courage and Excel-
lence,51 which sheds light on the lives and legacies of highly successful
and influential African-American athletes and teams, reveals that many
of these iconic athletes used their popularity to become spokespeople for
ideas that extend beyond the sports arena. Despite nationally acclaimed
performances, the names of Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali,
Tommie Smith, and John Carlos were discredited after the athletes deliv-
ered controversial statements and made public commitments that were
not deemed in line with the values they were expected to endorse as public
figures representing the colors of the nation. Muhammad Ali’s conversion
to the Nation of Islam as well as his overt stance against the Vietnam War,
in which he refused to serve by rejecting military conscription, eroded his
popularity.52 When victorious sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos
raised their clenched black-gloved fists in a Black Power salute during
the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games, they were booed off the podium and
out of the stadium. Both faced harassment on their return to the Unit-
ed States, experiencing stressful unemployment.53 Although scholars and
historians often hail committed athletes, the media nonetheless interpret
their activist commitment unfavorably.54 Douglas Kellner observes that
African-American athletes who use their visibility to put forward racial
issues run the risk of a backlash, which underlines the enduring weight
of racist prejudice:

[S]uch are the negative representations and connotations of

Blacks in American culture and such is the power of the
media to define and refine images that even the greater black
icons and spectacle can be denigrated to embody negative
connotations. As Michael Jackson, O. J. Simpson, and Mike
Tyson have discovered, those who live by the media can die
by the media, and overnight their positive representations and
signification can become negative. Media culture is only too
happy to use black figures to represent transgressive behavior
and to project society’s sins onto black figures.55

Jim Brown: All-American illustrates this reversal of fate, portraying Jim

Brown as a vocal icon of Black Nationalism. His life spans some of the

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most tumultuous decades of the twentieth century, ranging from the Civil
Rights movement of the 1960s to the Blaxploitation trend which launched
the professional football player’s film career in the 1970s. Jim Brown
shaped a public persona that stirred controversy, disrupting the status
quo in every aspect of his life. From his college years where he excelled
in several sports to his experience in Cleveland’s National Football League
team, Jim Brown ran up against a host of restraints imposed on colored
athletes by the racial divide that permeated sports culture, especially in
the southern states. Through the construction of his persona Lee discusses
the events that bore on African Americans at a time of heavy political
and social unrest.
The notion of race is a prevailing theme in the narrative of Brown’s
life, molding both his view of himself and of American society. When he
mentions his roots on St. Simons to account for the will and determination
he developed as an athlete and an activist, Brown recounts the story of
his west-African ancestors abducted to the islands: the Ebos would rather
march “into the ocean to their deaths”56 than accept the fate of slavery.
The close-up on his face suggests that this episode of collective memo-
ry has become part of his personal story, symbolizing the link that ties
him both to the place and to the black community in St. Simons. Brown
grew up in a segregated community, whose collective memory derived
from the experience of slavery and the spirit of resistance it nurtured
with its focus on family as a protective unit from outside aggression.57
Brown wishes to preserve and transmit the past by speaking in front of
the camera and by helping his children to remain property owners in an
area that is progressively gentrified.58 The sequence on St. Simons recreates
an incomplete family around Jim Brown, whose role as a father figure is
emphasized through the portrait introduced, which however excludes his
own father and his children’s mothers, indirectly alluding to his unstable
relationships with women [09:00].
The filmmaker focuses on Jim Brown as a committed athlete, who
co-founded with John Wooten the Negro Industrial and Economic Union
(NIEU) in Cleveland while still playing with the Browns, thus using his
sports fame as a platform to engage in the civil rights fight. Winning
empowered Brown and aroused a spirit of challenge at a time when
“sports and social change were on a collision course” according to histo-
rian Kathryn Jay who explains:

In turn, sporting events and black athletes provided the civil

rights movement with visible role models and spokespeople

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for social change. In the 1960s, sports and politics became

increasingly difficult to separate. The desire to succeed and
the will to win remained as potent as ever for athletes, but the
social unrest of the 1960s meant that, for some, new layers of
meaning emerged. Many athletes challenged traditional ideas
during the decade. Sometimes this manifested itself as active
protest against injustices within sports and in the larger society.
At other times, it appeared in new clothing styles and hair
lengths or as rebellion against coaching authority.59

Brown requested help from other professional black athletes to advance

economic development and self-determination through the creation of
African-American-run businesses, thus promoting a nationalist stance
that resonated with the message of Malcolm X. Brown can be heard in
the film recalling that “the Negro Industrial and Economic Union (NIEU)
was started to remind black people and entice black people and help black
people get into economic development” [57:50]. The activist succeeded in
gathering the support of a community of athletes who used their influence
to voice dissent while advocating racial equality and justice by creating the
NIEU, which provided loans to help start and develop small businesses.
The program was innovative at the time, making Brown and the NIEU
the forerunners of today’s micro-loan system.
When Muhammad Ali relinquished his slave name Cassius and con-
verted to the Nation of Islam [59:57], Brown and other athletes openly
expressed their support for a gesture that was deemed highly controversial.
Their public declarations demonstrated that African-American athletes
were conscious of the power they had developed as celebrities. Instead of
feeling restrained by their image, some of the best-known sports figures
felt empowered by their popularity at a time when “black was beauti-
ful.” They defied the commodification of their names by speaking up on
the racial issue, using their visibility in sports to proclaim their political
beliefs. Brown did not shy away from criticizing the government for its
treatment of blacks and was dubbed “the most controversial athlete of
the year” by Time magazine in 1965 even after being given his first role
in Rio Conchos, a Hollywood western released in 1964.60
The legacy of Jim Brown and the message endorsed by Spike Lee
need to be questioned in light of his subsequent sport documentaries,
which include such commercial works as Kobe Doin’ Work. Kobe Bryant
may well embody the economic success Jim Brown strove for through the
creation of the Negro Industrial and Economic Union (NIEU); nonethe-

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less, the documentary reinforces the myth of sports as a “mobility route”

by focusing on the basketball star, epitomizing a model which leads many
young black men astray according to Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia
Hill Collins:

For young black men growing in communities with few oppor-

tunities, sports are perceived as an attractive mobility route.
[. . .] Of the 40,000 African American boys playing high school
basketball, only thirty-five will make it to the NBA (National
Basketball Association) and only seven of those will be started.
This makes the odds of success 0.000175!61

Rather than interrogate the relationship between sports and business,

the documentary deflects attention from the industry around basketball
and conveys the filmmaker’s fascination for the figure of Kobe Bryant,
restoring the myth of sports as “a democratic force.” The documentary
highlights the blending of white and black players, positing that sports
play a political and social role in a democracy as argued by Kathryn Jay:
“The playing field, with its emphasis on teamwork, taught the lessons of
pluralistic democracy, in other words, and sticking up for a teammate
required that players ignore differences in class, race, and ethnicity.”62 The
Lakers appear as a multicultural team in the film, with Kobe Bryant blend-
ing into the melting pot of sport. Produced by the sport channel network
ESPN, Kobe Doin’ Work serves a commercial purpose which leads Lee to
revise and even silence his critical, controversial views.
The documentary tackles none of the moral dilemmas posed by
a professional career that drives young African-American athletes away
from their family and social roots into the corrupt world of money bas-
ketball. Conversely, Lee questions the power of individual ethics over the
financial clout of professional teams through the tense son and father
relationship in in his fiction film He Got Game. Film critic Thomas
McLaughlin compares He Got Game to the documentary Hoop Dreams
(Steve James, Frederick Marx, Peter Gilbert, 1994), for both films unveil
the darker sides of basketball: the documentary filmmakers followed five
years in the lives of Arthur Agee and William Gate, two teenagers whose
talent in basketball fostered dreams of a professional career, which the
film depicts as a “false hope for ghetto black kids” who are easily deceived
by “hypocritical coaches, unscrupulous agents, and hustling recruiters.”63
Spike Lee himself appears in the documentary, warning the young play-
ers attending the Nike-sponsored ABCD camp (the acronym stands for

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“Academic Betterment, Career Development”) against misconceptions

about their roles: he reminds them that they are seen as commodities
and their value will be of importance as long as they manage to win. He
bluntly declares: “Nobody cares about you. You’re black, you’re male, all
you’re supposed to do is deal drugs and mug women. The only reason
you’re here is you can make their team win. If their team wins, these
schools get a lot of money. This whole thing is revolving around money.”
Lee develops a critical stance toward recruiters whose fictional counter-
parts prey on Jesus in He Got Game; Jesus is offered tantalizing promises
of money and other grand prizes, including a Ferrari car and a billionaire’s
high-tech mansion, provided he accepts becoming a puppet in the hands
of an agent who will manage his profitable career. The film also revises
the basketball rags-to-riches stories that the media have shaped into a
national mythology, evoking instead the corrupt institutions that surround
the games. In their study about Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology,
Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins examine college basketball
and posit that “the companies and organizations that profit the most—
whether schools, product manufacturers, advertisers—are part of a class
system where there are differential benefits depending on your “rank”
within that system.”64 Players may get scholarships and be offered a chance
to earn college degrees; however, they are forbidden to take any payment
for their skills. They are not those who really benefit from a system which,
as the authors quoted above explain, reproduces race and class. In a book
published with the collaboration of sportswriter Ralph Wiley and entitled
The Best Seat in the House: A Basketball Memoir, Lee criticizes the evolu-
tion of basketball from a sports competition to an entertainment industry,
suggesting money has corrupted the game and mollified the players’ desire
to win.65 He deems the system is organized like a “racket.”66
Sports writer Jeffrey Lane remarks that a purely moneymaking ori-
entation separates Michael Jordan “from black athlete-activists such as
Jim Brown and Arthur Ashe, who used their fame to expose social ills.”67
Money has limited rather than expanded the power of athletes, who have
relinquished their predecessors’ political commitments to take an active
part in corporate marketing strategies. Mary G. McDonald argues that
Michael Jordan embodies a new generation of athletes:

Jordan’s political voice did not imitate those of predecessors

such as Tommie Smith, John Carlos, or Muhammad Ali. In
many ways, he was a willing corporate pitchman as much as he
was a star athlete. His participation in advertisements for Nike

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 The Legacy of Black Nationalism / 125

and the NBA stands in stark contrast to the vision of African

American athletes as outspoken critics of the white establish-
ment. Jordan certainly had myriad reasons to work with these
institutions, preferring to serve as a role model for the ideas
of racial tolerance, dedication, hard work, and achievement.68

Rather than blame Jordan for complying with the demands of an expand-
ing sporting market, the author contends that the conservative 1980s cre-
ated a different cultural atmosphere to the 1960s, producing new attitudes
among African-American athletes. “They narrow themselves down to the
game” declares Brown himself, alluding to those athletes whose life in
sports is dedicated to making money and earning prestige [01:07:00].
Although Lee criticizes the business of sports, the filmmaker’s career
advanced thanks to the contracts he signed with Nike and Michael Jordan.
As the original creator of the Jordan Spiz’ikes, a pair of sneakers which
he designed for Nike with Michael Jordan in 2006, Spike Lee seems too
involved in the corporate system to represent the radical streak of “Black
Nationalism.” Costing more than $200 a pair, Jordan Spiz’ikes do not
really symbolize black empowerment. The firm’s contentious practices,
including its child labor policy and low wages in production facilities in
Indonesia,69 which spurred scandals after Lee made his first Nike promo-
tional videos in 1987, have not urged the filmmaker to relinquish lucrative
contracts to spearhead global fair trade. His latest NBA commercials70
(including Royalty is Big)71 and his most recent Nike ad (The Chance
Nike Sportswear)72 suggest that he continues to make profits from them.
The filmmaker makes a cameo appearance at the beginning of the Nike
video, addressing the viewer directly by looking straight at the camera.
His voice-over commentary does not mention Nike, for Lee makes a very
personal statement about drive as the fuel behind practice:

Drive is the fuel that makes you want to succeed. If you’re

dedicated to your craft, that’s going to permeate your entire
being. When you have a drive, you have a goal and when you’re
focused you’re not going to anything that’s going to hinder
where that goal is . . . That’s what drive is for me, it’s the fuel.

The video focuses on a teenager whose life centers on running, which

he practices both at night and in the daytime when he is not in class or
playing football. The video lays stress on individual performance, moral-
izing the practice of sports, which provides the drive to achieve success.

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The urban setting denotes the ghettoes, a bleak environment which does
not hamper the drive to run and to climb up the social ladder. While
criticizing the media in his documentaries, Spike Lee’s promotional videos
indiscriminately reproduce the media rhetoric regarding sports, enhanc-
ing a discourse about individual and collective ethics. Kathryn Jay posits
that sports connote positive values, which overshadow the ethical prob-
lems associated with performance:

We celebrate athletes as national heroes and regard sports as

a place that teaches all the best qualities of citizenship, espe-
cially integrity, reliability, and a sense of responsibility. In the
next breath, however, the problems of sports—cheating, drugs,
violence, and an overweening emphasis on financial gains—are
bemoaned as representing the decline of the nation itself, with
sports serving as a sort of public barometer of ethical values
and decency.73

Whenever they break records and draw attention to their sports, Afri-
can-American athletes are drawn into the limelight. The media add
dramatic overtones to their stories, used to exemplify the individualist
mythology mentioned above and to further the interests of those corpora-
tions whose business is centered on sports. Lee’s adverts are imbued with
a naïve optimism, which does not permeate such film as Hoop Dreams—
which the filmmaker yet evoked as his favorite sports film in an interview
given to ESPN.74
Rarely mentioned is the fact that Lee’s documentary Jim Brown:
All-American was partly financed by the adverts for which Nike CEO
Phil Knight gave him a check.75 Such information seems to imply that Lee
may have compromised his ethical stance to be able to finance committed
works—including his two New Orleans pieces.

Exposing the Racial Politics of Neoliberal New Orleans

When Lee revisits the Lower Ninth Ward five years after the quarter was
devastated by the floods that followed the failures of the levees, his camera
dwells on a number of ragged lots dotted by the concrete foundations
upon which houses used to sit. If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise
[IGIW, Part 1, 46:08] conveys the sense of desolation generated by the
sight of “the white, irregularly spaced rectangles unnervingly calling to

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mind tombstones,”76 which literary critic Evie Shockley depicts as an eerie

spectacle: the voids in the landscape reveal the haunting presence of those
who have either died or been unable to return. The silent, empty streets
also bring up the absence of former New Orleans residents to Harry
“Swamp Thang” Cook who recalls playing with the Hot 8 Brass Band in
the quarter, enjoying himself with the people who ran out of their hous-
es and joined the procession. If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise
analyzes the relationship between the city and its residents, weaving the
filmed visual landscape into the witnesses’ oral narrative: the combination
produces either a sense of belonging or a feeling of estrangement. The
film assesses the lingering impact of Katrina through the visual traces
left on the landscape, which in a sense express the traumatic experiences
that have not been recounted—be they linked to Katrina’s destructions
or to the city’s programs of demolition and reconstruction. Some places
have been refurbished, others have been demolished, transforming the
relationship of residents to their city.
Lee investigates the city’s geography and architecture through the
viewfinder of his camera, enhancing the transformation of New Orleans’s
landscape, as the city is being reborn from urban planning. He uses edit-
ing to oppose its flamboyant reconstructions (such as the Superdome) and
contested programs of demolition (concerning the city’s housing projects),
expressing the loss of population as a physical and cultural wound which
is not tackled. The visual landscape changes and testifies to political deci-
sions that do not put forth solidarity across race and class.77 After he was
re-elected in 2006, Mayor Ray Nagin indeed openly declared that the city
would not focus help on the Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East:
“I’ve been saying this publicly, and people are starting to hear it: low-lying
areas of New Orleans east, stay away from . . . Move closer to the river.”78
Try as they might, many New Orleans residents could not return to their
home city, which did not provide the facilities needed to make everyday
life an easy task. The film conveys feelings of resentment and isolation,
experienced by individuals who could not cope with the gap between their
expectations as ordinary citizens and the quest of prestige that lay behind
the choices of the Bringing New Orleans Back (BNOB) urban planning
commission founded in September 2005 by Mayor Ray Nagin and chaired
by local real estate developer Joseph Canizaro. The plan explicitly stated
that “in rebuilding New Orleans the goal must be more than recovery,
it must be a transformation . . . a reconstruction that takes the city of
New Orleans to a new level.”79 The plan of transformation was conceived
from an ideological stance, which is given a vivid metaphor through the
reopening of the Superdome in Lee’s documentary.

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Lee calls attention to the Superdome as an iconic element of New

Orleans cityscape and to the organization of the Super Bowl as an event
illustrating the commodification of a building used for a spectacular mise
en scène.80 Rather than focus on the football match which is summarized
in a few decisive actions, the filmmaker captures the spectacle of brash
colors used to signify the aestheticization of social life: the orange seats
of the Superdome, the Saints’ golden trousers and the lively tones of the
Lombardi Gras Super Bowl Champs Parade testify to the regeneration
of New Orleans. The first sequence of the documentary begins inside
the renovated Superdome just before the XLIV Super Bowl Final was
launched on August 7, 2010 [IGIW, Part 1, 05:05]: the camera tilts down
the brand new seats and upgraded turf of the refurbished stadium, cap-
tures the looming National Football League (NFL) logo in a long shot of
the field, which expresses the financial and moral support brought by the
League that encouraged the Saints to return to New Orleans in 2006 after
moving to the San Antonio Alamadome for the 2005 season.81
The emphasis on the Superdome allows Lee to visually summarize
the policies enforced to reconstruct New Orleans. Historian Kathryn Jay
contends that hosting a local team proves a city’s “big-league” status and
nurtures local pride and identity among fans, sometimes leading cities
to overpay to claim the prestige of major-league teams.82 Such concern
undergirded the local authorities’ decision to promote the rapid recon-
struction of the Superdome after the National Football League announced
that the New Orleans Saints would remain in Louisiana for the 2006
season, contesting team owner Tom Benson’s wish to relocate in another
city. Repairs of the Superdome were financed by public and private invest-
ments: FEMA contributed $116 million to the first phase, $294 million
were financed through bonds issued by the state government and the
NFL provided $20 million more after securing local business supports
through the creation of the Saints Business Council—“an affiliation of 27
local business leaders who pledged to support the Saints by buying suites,
tickets and sponsorship.”83
Remembered as the familiar backdrop to the portrayal of stranded
citizens during Katrina, the notorious stadium was renovated in time for
the return of the Saints to the city in September 2006, which Mayor Ray
Nagin indicated was an important economic and political symbol, demon-
strating to the nation as a whole that the city was on the road to recov-
ery.84 The amount of attention paid to the Superdome at the beginning
of If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise points to the psychological
impact of its reconstruction on New Orleans residents: the upbeat music

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of “Who dat say they’re gonna beat dem Saints . . . who dat? who dat?”
accompanies the filmic discovery of the renovated Superdome, conveying
the enthusiasm of football fans and New Orleanians who felt that their
city was symbolically being reborn. The Super Bowl drew thousands of
spectators from neighbor states and the largest viewership ever in U.S.
television history, suggesting New Orleans had recovered its pre-Katrina
place as a national attraction.
The film highlights the social and economic function of the Super-
dome, reflecting an imagery that helps shape the tourists’ gaze on New
Orleans: the traumatic memories of Katrina were supplanted by a picture
of social harmony as the media spotlighted the festive gathering around
the sport event. The “Louisiana Superdome” was completed as early as
September 2006, restoring the structure to its 1975 status. Geographer
Peirce F. Lewis asserts that the Superdome was originally “symbolic of the
new New Orleans—an attempt to outdo Texas in bigness, shininess, and
the size of its color TV screens.”85 The reconstruction of the Superdome
suggests that the same economic concerns prevailed in 2005: the building
was originally expected to spur business and enliven the Central Business
District, which had developed around the Rivergate Convention Center
completed in 1968.86 When filming the activities taking place around the
Superdome, including the football fans’ celebrations and the Mardi Gras
Parades, Lee sheds light on the social function of the Superdome, which
contributed to turning New Orleans into a “tourist city” in the 1980s
under the guidance of a new breed of businessmen—among whom the
name of Joseph Canizaro appears.87
Local authorities made the reopening of the Superdome a top pri-
ority in the months that followed Katrina, which demonstrated that the
development of tourism would take precedence over housing reconstruc-
tion in the new New Orleans. Although Lee takes part in the festivities
of the Saints’ victory, he enhances the estrangement some New Orleans
residents feel when witnessing the gay parades flowing into the streets
of the French quarter while other areas have not been rehabilitated yet.
The tradition of Mardi Gras is explicitly compared to the media spectacle
orchestrated around the Super Bowl: rituals and sports are transformed
into commodities, designed to revive the economy rather than the com-
munity. Quite interestingly, the lively Super Bowl sequence in If God Is
Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise deceivingly leads to frustrations and dis-
appointments after the Saints’ victory. The tone of the whole documentary
darkens as the film unfolds, shattering the budding optimism expressed
by the people who rejoiced after the game.

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Documentary filmmaking highlights the indexical quality of city-

scapes,88 registering the imprints of the city’s geographical development in
relation to its economic and ethnic evolution. According to sociolinguists
Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow, “the city can be read as a text, a
festival of signs—an ‘iconosphere,’ ”89 which Lee’s nonfiction series empha-
sizes by presenting the city as a symbolical landscape for the viewer to
decipher. Lee points to architectural designs like the Superdome as icons
of economic choices that changed the city’s outlook. Interviewing football
fans who dressed up to attend the Super Bowl, Lee depicts the spectacle
which the local authorities and the media orchestrated to modify New
Orleans’s public image: the city that had failed to support its community
in the face of Katrina is portrayed as a melting-pot of people [IGIW, Part
1, 10:45].
The credit sequence of If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise is
built on a dichotomy that encapsulates Spike Lee’s documentary project:
appearances are misleading and one should look below the surface to
grasp truth. Lee first places the viewer in an attitude of contemplation
by filming the city from afar; but he forfeits physical and critical distance
to look at the city from the street level and to experience it actively,
revealing the Super Bowl festivities as a simulacrum. While the charac-
ters interviewed confide their faith in the rebirth of the city, the eclectic
montage of handheld camerawork and studio footage spotlights the fragile
hopes aroused by the Saints’ victory. The first images of post-Katrina
New Orleans bespeak what Julia Hell and Andreas Schönle define as “a
culture obsessed with its self-image, struggling to determine what defines
its underlying reality once the layers of its self-representation are peeled
away.”90 If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise captures an act of rep-
resentation: the Super Bowl gave New Orleans national exposure, which
the city’s authorities took advantage of to shape public perception and
overturn negative stereotypes. According to Professor of urban design
and planning Laurence J. Vale, the emphasis on symbolic milestones is
a common theme in post-disaster recovery, which ranges “from efforts
to restore architectural landmarks (such as the plan to repair the New
Orleans Superdome in time for the Saints to begin the fall 2006 football
season) to the resumption of signal events (such as Mardi Gras, just six
months after the hurricane).”91 Although four and half years had elapsed
since Katrina when Lee started shooting the second season of his series,
the traumatic images that circulated on the Internet and in the media
continued to haunt public memory of New Orleans. All the interviewees
speak about the past and revisit New Orleans with these memories in

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mind, illustrating the notion of dark tourism which attracts new visi-
tors to the Lower Ninth Ward and to the Superdome.92 Evie Shockley
notes that the traces of Katrina provide a spectacle for “tourists [who]
are particularly interested in seeing the Lower Ninth Ward, where they
snap pictures through the windows of their vehicles as former residents
of the area search for salvageable possessions, cut up fallen trees, and gut
the houses in which they had lived for long years.”93 While Lee’s camera
travels around the city, recording the spectacle provided by the surreal
landscape of broken houses, he strives to counter the tourist’s voyeuristic
gaze by associating the sight of smashed buildings with the individual sto-
ries they signify. Rather than adopt an external point of view that would
impose his view of the city, Lee expresses his support to the characters he
accompanies through the streets by walking beside them with a handheld
camera, striving to understand and to convey their relationship to the city.
When the Super Bowl celebrations end, Spike Lee discovers a land-
scape of ruins that connotes past and present discriminations: Endesha
Juakali criticizes the programs that focus on entertainment instead of
improving access to everyday facilities: “We’re broke, we’re poor, we’re
suffering, we have nothing. We need to focus on struggle, not entertain-
ment.” As a former resident of the demolished St. Bernard housing project,
he expresses the first discordant view in the documentary, refusing to
buy the “Who Dat” spirit as he sits in bright daylight in front of a house
whose barred window signifies both the visual and geographical distance
between the touristic attractions of the city center and the derelict land-
scape in other parts of the city [IGIW, Part 1, 15:06]. Sitting still in front
of the camera, he compares New Orleans with a “plantation” which he
is “trying to run away” from [IGIW, Part 1, 18:48]. The attention paid
to such symbolic sites as the Superdome both reveals and conceals the
plans that guided reconstruction. Using his camera to give voice to such
characters as Endesha Juakali, who emerged as a vocal critic of city pol-
itics, Lee turns his film into a civil rights tool and thereby continues the
struggles of the activists he follows in the city.

The Civil Rights Fight in New Orleans

The comparison of When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts with
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise highlights an evolution as to
Spike Lee’s political framing of the situation. Literature scholar Anna
Hartnell contends that the filmmaker’s ideological message was rather

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ambiguous in the first documentary, which highlighted the difficulties of

African-American homeowners whose rights were blatantly ignored by
insurance companies. Lee’s visit to middle-class Gentilly enhanced the
plight of African-American homeowners, allowing individuals to voice
their discontent at the local and federal lack of initiative. However, this
perspective simultaneously discarded the case of African Americans
whose needs were not provided for because they lived in rental housing,
especially public housing. In his attempt to undermine the racist dis-
course that permeated the media, Lee focalized on the predicament of
African-American homeowners:

This rhetoric rightly rejects a racist discourse that links blackness

and dependence on the state, but it also plays into a rhetoric
that privileges property rights—one that nonetheless founders
on the fact that these rights are left unprotected by insurance
companies and a federal government that claim to guarantee
them. As this particular witness indicates, a number of the
property owners that appear in the film are clearly members
of a black middle class, whose success and savings are encap-
sulated in the homes they’ve lost to the storm. Most poignant
perhaps is the trip made by Terence Blanchard—composer of the
documentary’s elegiac score—and his mother to the wreckage
of the family home in Act III. But the emphasis placed on the
fact that insurance companies are busy wriggling out of their
obligations by claiming to cover the effects of wind and not
water testifies to a dream of home ownership bankrupt from
the outset by its connections to corporate America.94

Missing from Lee’s portrayal of homeowners in the Lower Ninth Ward is a

sociological background which Evie Shockley gives us when she observes
that “they owed relatively little or nothing at all—homes that, in some
cases, they had built with their own hands—was what made it possible
for them to live comfortable lives on relatively little money.”95 Lee eschews
portraying the African-American poor, laying stress instead on the plight
of homeowners who cannot have their houses rebuilt without the neces-
sary support from local government.
The situation he discovers in 2010 prompts the filmmaker to revise
his views and to endorse an activist stance in opposition to the politics
of reconstruction enforced as part of the urban renewal plans. Rather
than promote a more equitable city, these development schemes further

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exposed race and class differences, which If God Is Willing and Da Creek
Don’t Rise spotlights through the controversy aroused by the demolition of
the housing projects. The city council called for the replacement of low-in-
come housing developments with mixed-income housing, thus denying
poor black residents the possibility to return and to integrate many white
areas of the city. When filming the housing projects, Lee conveys the
sense of absence that pervades the empty buildings, whose barred win-
dows metaphorically suggest that the residents were given no voice in
the process. Low-income residents were strongly discouraged from going
back to New Orleans by the loss of affordable housing combined with a
shortage of construction materials, the prohibitive price of which acted
as a deterrent to rebuilding. Hazel Denhart states that money became the
key to returning to New Orleans, where unemployment rates were high:

Since the majority of low-income housing was destroyed (and

very little of it was back in place 2 years later), those returning
to the city in the early years after the storm were those who
had the money to return. Large numbers of low-income resi-
dents were threatened with being priced out of the rebuilding
effort. [. . .] Before the Hurricane, the Housing Authority of
New Orleans (HANO) operated 5100 low-income units in four
sites. By late spring, 2008 only 880 families had been allowed
to return to this low-income housing.96

Although the projects belong to the Housing Authority of New Orleans

(HANO), placed under federal control through the Department of Hous-
ing and Urban Development (HUD), the city council has the final say con-
cerning the policies to be enforced as part of city planning. On December
20, 2007, the city council unanimously voted in favor of demolition: four
housing projects were concerned, which made it impossible for former
tenants to return.97 The decision to tear down a series of housing projects
was interpreted as merely another sign of racial discrimination, which
Attorney at Law Advocates for Environmental Human Rights Monique
Harden shockingly qualifies as “ethnic cleansing” [IGIW, Part 1, 38:00] in
front of Lee’s camera. Musicologist Ned Sublette blames the cynical attitude
of local and federal authorities, which he believes seized Katrina as an
opportunity to have the Housing Projects erased from New Orleans map:

The sudden evacuation of the city, the mandatory evacuation

of everyone in the city provided a unique opportunity to move

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all the people out and close the projects down—a process that
would have taken years. So that the projects were not just
boarded up, but the windows were sealed with lead shields.
People who had left quickly found themselves locked out and
they never got to come back. [IGIW, Part 1, 35:00]

Such is the view endorsed by many African Americans interviewed in

the film, expressing they felt deprived of their voice as citizens when the
police blocked access to the public meeting of New Orleans City Coun-
cil on December 20, 2007. The photographs interspersed in the archival
footage of the meeting emphasize the shocking brutality of repression:
African-American protesters were tasered to silence when the city coun-
cil members were expected to vote for or against demolition. A line of
policemen blocked the entrance to the council, recalling the segregation
practices of the past.
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise is pervaded by gloom
and a keen sense of loss as reconstruction efforts promoted demolition
instead of renovation. Evie Shockley goes as far as positing that demolition
was conceived as a plan to get rid of the Lower Ninth Ward residents,
considering that “the urgency of the demolition plans was intended to
demoralize those who are committed to returning and rebuilding the
Lower Ninth.”98 Lee presents the housing projects in a nostalgic light,
using editing to underscore the opposition between the present and the
past. Black-and-white still photographs visually depict the original pro-
jects as pleasant communities whereas colored footage conveys their pro-
gressive degradation. The photographs incorporated in the film narrative
may be promotional shots as their harmonious spatial composition creates
a sense of happy innocence with children playing about in the open green
areas. The black-and-white photographs of St. Thomas (1941), Magnolia
(1958), Lafitte (1953), and Iberville (1952) produce a visual rupture in
the film, idealizing the housing projects which originally symbolized the
concern of Rooseveltian liberals for social justice and cohesion. Peirce F.
Lewis suggests that the housings were icons of the New Deal, which adds
a highly symbolical dimension to their demolition. While the progressive
city disappears in the new New Orleans, sacrificing traces of its past,99
the photographs capture the sense of community that prevailed in the
projects: one of them depicts a teacher addressing her class of attentive
black children on the Lafitte well-tended lawn [IGIW, Part 1, 35:13]. This
idyllic atmosphere pervades the archival stills which, however, strongly
contrast with the colored footage of the Desire Projects dating back to

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1978. The rosy picture is replaced with a bleak prospect: garbage litters the
foreground while indistinct human figures loom in the background, gen-
erating an atmosphere of gloom and danger [Part 1, 36:00]. Although they
were originally segregated, the housing projects became predominantly
black in the 1960s: the white flight to the suburbs and the scaling back
of social services caused the projects to deteriorate and they “acquired
a fearsome reputation” according to Ned Sublette [IGIW, Part 1, 36:00].
The film traces the slow degradation of the projects which grew more
and more segregated after integration was made compulsory, prompt-
ing the middle-class whites to move to the new suburbs that impinged
on the surrounding wetlands converted into residential areas.100 Only the
poor remained in the projects—most of them being African Americans
suffering from discrimination. Peirce F. Lewis notes the “close correla-
tion between poverty and black population, especially in public housing”
in opposition to “the low incidence of poverty in suburban areas which
developed after 1950 and in fashionable areas of the city—Vieux Carré,
Garden District, and the university district.”101
The documentary endorses the political message of the filmed par-
ticipants who perceive the closure of the housing projects as a measure
designed to get rid of the poor in New Orleans. It conveys the emotion
produced by images of demolition that destroyed individuals’ sense of
place by focusing on the image of a child standing behind wire netting
gazing at a bulldozer that tears down the walls of the B. W. Cooper projects
(December 12, 2007). The boy’s still figure in the foreground contrasts
with the mechanical, repeated moves of the bulldozer in the background.
A close-up shows his hands clutch at the wire netting, expressing the pow-
erlessness of former residents whose point of view was never taken into
account by the city council [IGIW, Part 1, 39:48]. The bulldozer’s blade
rips through the houses and tears a community apart, thereby destroying
the possibility of returning for those who wished to recover their former
lives. The figure of the child adds emotion to the scene, evoking the
trauma of displacement and destruction, for the demolition of the hous-
ing projects signified total loss for the former inhabitants. The figure of
the child clasping at the wire netting suggests his up-rootedness as he is
reduced to being a silent observer. The emotion that pervades the shot
does not transpire in Mayor Ray Nagin’s voice when he retrospectively
justifies the political choices made:

I think that prior to Katrina, public housing in the city of New

Orleans was atrocious. I think it got worse after Katrina. I’m

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not convinced that other than one public housing development

being the Lafitte, all the rest of them were beyond repair. In
my humble opinion Lafitte probably could have been saved but
it would have been astronomical as far as the cost. The shell
was solid but all the internal wire, all the internal plumbing.
Everything would have to be done from scratch. [IGIW, Part
1, 40:51]

Although Mayor Ray Nagin makes an exception of the Lafitte Housing

Projects, he never fought to keep them open. Lee uses editing to spotlight
the lack of dialogue between the authorities and the citizens, who regain
a voice through the film.
By confronting images of the past with present footage, the docu-
mentary relates urban iconography to the dominant political and soci-
oeconomic ideologies. The projects testified to the federal government’s
support to the poor in the Roosevelt era whereas their demolition was
determined by private market ideology. Lee underlines the opposition
between Ray Nagin and Annise Parker, the mayor of Houston, who helped
welcome New Orleanians after Katrina even on a long-term basis [IGIW,
Part 1, 25:10]. Lee weaves together Annise Parker’s comments with inter-
viewees’ testimonies, illustrating the impact of political commitments on
an individual level. Pastor R. C. Blakes, Jr., states that Houston “changed
his world view” as he saw “white upper middle class Republican peo-
ple reach out in tangible ways to lower class impoverished black people”
[IGIW, Act 1, 24:55]. Such statement tends to reaffirm New Orleans’s dif-
ference to the rest of the United States, emphasizing its alien status within
the nation, suggesting that no positive change can emerge from Katrina.
While the constructed landscape of New Orleans exemplifies histori-
cal race and class barriers that contributed to shaping ethnic diversity into
a unique cultural fabric, the new New Orleans appears as a project ded-
icated to maximize profits. Many citizens viewed the plan established for
reconstruction as an attempt to eliminate concentrated poverty without
introducing long-term reforms. As member of New Orleans City Council,
Cynthia Hedge-Morrell publicly argued that she favored demolition to put
an end to the cycle of poverty in the projects: “I’m voting for demolition
because I believe in my heart that the replacement of the Saint Bernard
Housing Development with the mixed-income community will do more
for the development and the improvement of District D than any other
single step we might take” [37:00]. This analysis exposes a bias against
poverty which also pervaded HUD secretary Alphonso Jackson’s national

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stance on the Housing Projects when he stated on June 4, 2007: “We

should not put them back in the drug-infested, killing-infested environ-
ment they came out of ” [IGIW, Part 1, 41:42]. Underlying this view was
also an economic argument in favor of contractors and developers who
targeted the markets for more profit.
Lee’s interviewees voice their awareness of institutional discrimi-
nation, which pervaded urban planning during reconstruction. In this
section of the film, talking heads are identified as activists who are com-
mitted at a local level: Endesha Juakali stands for the residents of the
St. Bernard housing projects; Jeanne Nathan represents the quarter of
Tremé through the Creative Alliance of New Orleans; Monique Hard-
en blends her personal and professional commitments as Attorney for
Environmental Human Rights; Krystal Muhammad speaks up for all the
members of a displaced community during the meeting of New Orleans
City Council. If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise calls attention to
the activist initiatives led by citizen groups which, however, had very little
impact on the policies of reconstruction, illustrating the failure of partic-
ipative democracy in the face of corporations whose money flow acted as
a determining factor. The demolition of the projects built in the days of
the New Deal was as symbolical an event as the opening of the Super-
dome: the traces of the Roosevelt era were wiped out from the city which
Mayor Nagin wished to rejuvenate by getting rid of all social ills related
to poverty. Quite significantly, the houses built in replacement to the St.
Bernard Housing Projects are part of the “Columbia Park at the Bayou
District”—a name that connotes local gentrification. Lee only shows the
façades of units that resemble each other, with immigrant gardeners plant-
ing rows of green plants to create harmonious designs that will enliven
the place. For Tracy L. Washington, the whole plan of reconstruction
is based on a lie, for low-income and middle-income residents will not
mix as imagined. She dubs the project a “utopian community” [IGIW,
Part 1, 44:00] which echoes the plans presented for the construction of a
brand new hospital that “includes abandoning the landmark Charity Hos-
pital along with its historical medical district and clearing 27 city blocks”
[IGIW, Part 1, 01:42:00]. The film cuts to a television news program that
presents the project as a modern facility through futuristic images which
convey an idealized view of the future hospital in stark contrast to the
footage of the allegedly outdated Charity Hospital. Contradictory accounts
about the damage undergone by the buildings produce the same effects
as conspiracy theories in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.
Jacques Morrial contends there was a “myth out there that Katrina and

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the floods destroyed Charity Hospital but the truth is only the basement
flooded” [IGIW, Part 1, 01:42:00]. Even though opinions diverge as to
the extent of damage that affected the building structure, Mitch Landrieu
unveils the economic aspect of the negotiations that allowed New Orleans
to obtain $127 million from FEMA. Sandra Stokes from the Founda-
tion of Historic Louisiana explains that 70 neighborhood organizations
opposed the project which would cause 243 houses and businesses to be
demolished—including some 125-year-old houses representing historical
heritage buildings.
Spike Lee’s political stance seems to evolve from a belief in self-en-
terprise, embodied by the figures of Jim Brown and Kobe Bryant in his
sports documentaries, to a more progressive stance, highlighting the
responsibilities of the government to its constituents in If God Is Willing
and Da Creek Don’t Rise. The struggles that underlie reconstruction in
New Orleans led many people to assume active roles as citizens, fighting
to preserve their environment or their jobs in the face of corporations
and politicians whose priority was to rejuvenate the city through the pro-
motion of private ventures even if it meant sacrificing the community
fabric. A variety of citizen organizations sprung up in the wake of Kat-
rina, gathering citizens beyond class and race to put forth the identity
of their quarter which they felt was threatened by demolition programs.
The crisis was made even worse by the British Petroleum oil spill caused
by the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20, 2010. The
cameras’ insistence on landscape testifies to the visual shocks provoked
first by Katrina, second by the oil slick, which ruined the region’s natural
assets. Douglas Brinkley cynically comments on New Orleans as a city
plagued by its past, which undermines any dream of progress [IGIW,
Part 1, 17:34]:

There is no new New Orleans. Cities have one straight line

history. This is a city, if you look at the history of New Orleans,
that’s had yellow fever plagues where everybody dies, typhoid,
dysentery, civil war, burnings, slavery, Katrina is just part of a
continuum. So it’s still the same city, just struggling in many
ways with the same problems. Where I’m concerned it cannot
go back to its kneejerk boosterism. “We’re amazing. We’re the
best.” There’s deep down a kind of weird inferiority complex
that goes in New Orleans. The one thing that unites everybody
is both the feeling that they’re spending their whole life telling
everyone how great things are but secretly they know they’re
not and that creates a kind of weird schizophrenic attitude.

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The historian does not distinguish the traditional parades from the Super
Bowl media event, suggesting both are no more than rituals that help
communities cope with a history of injustice. He points to a state of denial
that has led to “schizophrenic attitudes” which may even have impeded
progress. Interestingly, Douglas Brinkley adopts a more committed stance
through his renewed collaboration with Spike lee, delivering overtly con-
troversial statements that caused him to “catch some heat” according to
the filmmaker’s remarks on the commentary soundtrack. As the American
scholar draws a psychological portrait of the city, Lee ironically cuts to
images of Mardi Gras which vanish in the blinding sunshine; the city
residents are in disguise when parading on the streets.
While demolition programs provoked fierce reactions among New
Orleanians whose houses the government decided to have bulldozed when
damage was estimated at beyond 51 percent of their fair market value,102
reconstruction projects led by Brad Pitt and other organizations in the
Lower Ninth Ward offer a glimpse of hope for a number of residents.
In counterpoint to Clovina “Rita” McCoy, who keeps repeating that she
hates Texas where she was compelled to move, Lee portrays several New
Orleans homeowners who pose proudly in front of the houses that Brad
Pitt had a team of architects design for them in the Lower Ninth Ward.
Conceived as safe, energy efficient, affordable “green constructions,” the
houses were built with the support of the Make It Right Foundation which
the actor created and launched on December 3, 2007.103 The place exhibits
a different atmosphere to Humble: homeowners planted small shrubs that
demonstrate the new relationship they are experiencing with an envi-
ronment they no longer fear; children are playing outside, progressively
appropriating a site that had been devastated and abandoned; the families
interviewed or photographed stand smiling in front of their new houses
which symbolize the change in their life. The development of the new
Lower Ninth Ward pinpoints what can be achieved in terms of “green
construction.” Brad Pitt comments on the collaboration that allowed the
quarter to be reborn, involving both homeowners and architects in the
process. The environment-friendly houses have been built on pillars with
an open access to the roof, which ironically suggests the levees may not
be trusted in case of another huge storm. The camera follows Brad Pitt
as he walks through the Lower Ninth Ward, relates to the homeowners
the Make It Right Foundation supported, depicting his commitment on
the ground in opposition to the distance that keeps members of the city
council away from the housing projects they decided to have demolished.
The new Lower Ninth Ward exemplifies the vision that was expressed in
the United New Orleans Plan drafted by the New Orleans Community

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Support Foundation, incorporating the work of many agencies and neigh-

borhood associations that had devised “recovery.” The plan delivered in
April 2007 stated that “all citizens, business and investors in our great city
have a right to a safer, smarter, stronger city that enable a substantially
higher quality of life, greater economic opportunity, and greater security
against hurricanes than New Orleans had in the past.”104 Part of these
objectives were achieved in the Lower Ninth Ward, whose residents were
homeowners determined to return to their roots in a quarter they were
deeply attached to.
The families filmed in the reconstructed area radiate fulfillment
despite the remaining physical traces of Katrina around them, includ-
ing the concrete remnants of houses that were swept away by the floods
[IGIW, Part 1, 46:00]. Lee uses a series of still shots to capture the land-
scape of desolation conveyed by the concrete blocks where the houses
used to sit, exposing the lack of progress in reconstruction and the feel-
ing of abandonment that has kept haunting the present since the storm.
The modern houses built by the Make It Right Foundation herald the
rebirth of the Lower Ninth Ward as a community, for they have helped
residents overcome the trauma of Katrina, linked to the shock of seeing
dead bodies as well as to the experience of displacement.105 This example
illustrates how reconstruction can be devised to help individuals heal
from the trauma of Katrina and improve quality of life in the city. The
sequence devoted to reconstruction provides a source of comfort after the
narrative retraces the desperate attempts at preventing the demolition of
New Orleans housing projects. It also makes the documentary a more
militant piece, presenting alternative paths of action to be followed. The
film actively supports the struggles of the speakers whose arguments Lee
develops into powerful visuals.

The Documentaries’ Ethical and Political Stance

While Bill Nichols argues that ethical issues are key to documentary film-
making,106 he is also keen to observe that no set of fixed principles should
be applied to define an only rule. In other words, “an open-ended or sit-
uated ethical standard—one rooted in the concrete contingencies of time
and place” should prevail.107 Depending on the situation investigated—
whether it implies powerful characters who have access to representation
or people without a voice in society, the responsibility and accountability
of the man or the woman behind the camera varies. Questions of ethics

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 The Legacy of Black Nationalism / 141

may prompt a filmmaker to intervene in the course of action s/he is doc-

umenting—either to undermine deception on the part of his interviewees
or to help them express themselves. This intrusion disrupts the belief that
“spontaneous, uncontrolled cinematic recordings”108 would allow unme-
diated truth to emerge, which undergirded the notion of Direct Cinema
developed by American filmmakers Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, and
Donn Alan Pennebaker.109 Documentary scholar Michael Renov contends
that filmmakers no longer shy away from displaying markers of subjectiv-
ity—“the filter through which the Real enters discourse as well as a kind
of experiential compass guiding the work toward its goal as embodied
knowledge.”110 The ethics of documentary filmmaking are unstable: while
the uncontrolled aesthetic of Direct Cinema was to testify to minimal
tampering with the events recorded, the obtrusive presence of Michael
Moore’s on-screen persona serves to signify his engagement with the
issues he documents and the people he encounters, self-reflexively point-
ing to his films as constructions expressing a subjective perspective. The
documentaries produced exemplify opposite ethical stances: Pennebaker
deemed he was accountable to his audience whereas Moore foregrounds
his responsibility to lower-class characters, whom he makes sure gain a
voice in the process of his filmmaking.111
Judging from When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Lee’s
ethics prompts him to side with his interviewees. The situation in New
Orleans led the filmmaker to discuss many issues that did not crop up in
his previous work. African Americans faced problems that hit the whole
American working class and middle class, which drove Lee to adopt an
activist stance that could be compared to Michael Moore’s or Robert
Greenwald’s. Opposition to corporation greed seems to be the mantra of
these documentary filmmakers who use their films to call for more justice.
In an interview delivered to the LA Times on August 23, 2010, Spike Lee
reacted to the ongoing oil spill in the Mississippi Gulf Coast by calling for
justice: “It’s about justice, it’s about right and wrong. I love this country,
and these people are just screwing it up over greed. It’s a disgrace. What
we stress is that eleven people died on that oil rig over a company’s deci-
sion to cut corners.”112 These words do resonate with Robert Greenwald’s
activist filmmaking as defined on the website of his company Brave New
Films,113 for Lee allows his interviewees to make their opinions heard by
using the screen space which the film director’s name can open up on
television. Not unlike Greenwald, Spike Lee’s documentary contributes to
democratizing screen space by incorporating amateur footage shot by Dr.
Ben Marble, a resident of Gulf Port on the Mississippi Gulf Coast who

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made videos to record the devastation in this area which seemed “to
go unnoticed by the media” [WTLB, Act 3, 12:30]. The young man was
shocked to discover a line of policemen blocking the road to his destroyed
house because Vice-president Dick Cheney was being interviewed a few
blocks from there; Marble approached Cheney and notoriously told him
to “go and fuck himself.” Ben Marble recalls the event in front of Lee’s
camera, taking full responsibility for his slander. The anecdote evokes an
act of subversion that Lee endorses by appropriating the filmed footage
in his documentary.
Although working within the media system through HBO, Lee
challenges the “propaganda model” which manufactures consent accord-
ing to Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. His documentaries may
contribute to promote social change by educating viewers and fostering
democratic debate, which Herman and Chomsky argue should be the
purpose of free, independent media:

The organization and self-education of groups in the community

and workplace, and their networking and activism, continue to
be the fundamental elements in steps toward the democratiza-
tion of our social life and any meaningful social change. Only
to the extent that such developments succeed can we hope to
see media that are free and independent.114

This didactic concern actually widens the scope of Lee’s filmmaking in

If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, which addresses a crosso-
ver audience by tackling environment concerns that affect all the coast-
al communities. The color line disappears in the face of such disasters
as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Rather than use his interviewees as
mouthpieces, Lee’s documentary endorses his interlocutors’ commitments
to fighting against injustice in the new New Orleans.
Contrary to When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts which
was based on a series of interviews with many ordinary citizens, If God
Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise touches on specific issues that require
the knowledge of specialists in the field. These experts, however, speak on
behalf of New Orleans citizens whom they represent through their sta-
tus within the community. The individuals interviewed offer crisscrossing
perspectives: local fishermen (Albert Andry III, Dustin King, Vietnam-
ese American fishermen), scholars (Douglas Brinkley), journalists (David
Shammer, Anderson Cooper), musicians (Dr. John), environmentalist
activists (Lisa Margonelli, Fred Krupp), local attorneys (Scott Bickford,

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 The Legacy of Black Nationalism / 143

Joseph Bruno), local associations (William Nungesser, Fred Johnson) and

official representatives (Ahn “Joseph” Cao) express an array of opinions
that bring considerable insight into the local consequences of a national
state of affairs. Lee thus highlights the dynamics of associations of con-
cerned citizens determined to have their views and opinions listened to
by local authorities during the reconstruction process after Katrina and
the 2010 oil slick. While the 2006 documentary series relied on a diversity
of participants, who voiced their individual experiences of Katrina with
the purpose to bearing witness to history, its sequel broaches the subject
of reconstruction in New Orleans through the activist citizens’ commit-
ment to recovering their place in a city undergoing a rejuvenating pro-
cess. During his Mayoral Inauguration speech delivered on May 3, 2010,
Mitch Landrieu presented the oil slick as a twofold danger, enhancing
the intertwined environmental and economic crises looming ahead: “The
spill threatens the wildlife and the wetlands, the fisheries that feed our
nation. In fact, it threatens the economy and the very way of life on the
mend” [IGIW, Part 2, 53:00]. The documentary offers a medley of voices
in response to this statement, expressing individual reactions that extend
beyond the economic concerns to convey environmental worries.
The committed stance of this documentary goes beyond race and
class issues when tackling the environmental crisis wrought by British
Petroleum’s explosion on its oil-drilling platform located fifty miles off the
coast of Louisiana on April 20, 2010. Although Lee emphasizes the local
threat by interviewing all the people affected by the spill, whether on a
personal or a professional level, he also broadens the subject by defining
the environmental catastrophe in moral and political terms. Interesting-
ly, the film creates a community of opponents across the class and race
divide; wherever they live in New Orleans, whatever their social status,
the participants question the political and economic roots behind the
crisis. They identify a set of issues unveiled by the British Petroleum spill,
pointing out the failure of the state and federal governments to deal with
the immoral, excessive economic and environmentally unsafe practices of
the British multinational oil and gas company, BP. All of the participants
are representatives of the civil society, whose dissenting voices seem, how-
ever, to bear very little on the situation. President of Plaquemines Parish
William Nungesser confesses he was in disarray when he was told no one
was allowed to fly over the Gulf Coast to assess the extent of the spill:
“When the first crews went out to take pictures, the coast guards turned
them around and said: ‘BP has the canal closed.’ How could BP have the
canal closed? How can the FAA [the Federal Aviation Administration] sit

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in BP’s office in Houna and tell our local airport they can’t fly?” [IGIW,
Part 2, 57:20] Lee depicts a group of citizens who articulate critical views
of the collusion between private industry and local, state as well as fed-
eral governments. Cedric Johnson’s book entitled The Neoliberal Deluge
posits that the American neoliberal economic model has produced the
conditions that made Katrina and the oil spill possible. He analyzes the
ideological underpinning of policies that have created a favorable climate
to corporations’ growth and profits, promoting a culture of profit that
values “private property over life, liberty, and the common good that had
been a guiding principle of American ruling elites long before Hurricane
Katrina made landfall.”115 He also compares Barack Obama to George
W. Bush, underlining that the British Petroleum spill was referred to as
“Obama’s Katrina”:

Those who described the BP disaster as “Obama’s Katrina”

captured a core truth—the two disasters are related not merely
by common geography and the population impacted, but, more
fundamentally, both disasters share common roots in neoliberal
restructuring. White the catastrophic inundation deaths in New
Orleans were consequences of state divestment in social services
and physical infrastructure, the BP oil disaster stemmed from
a deregulatory environment that was crafted by Congressional
Democrats and Republicans alike.116

If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise evokes Barack Obama’s response
to the oil spill through archival footage depicting the moment when the
president visited local fishermen and announced his determination to
have BP pay for the damage. He publicly declared on May 2, 2010: “BP
is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill” [IGIW, Part 2,
01:04:45].
The documentary’s reference to the oil slick disaster underlines the
parallel with Katrina, implicitly comparing the presidents’ weak response
to the two crises. Lee’s compilation montage emphasizes the contrast
between the citizens’ commitment and their elected representatives’ aloof-
ness. Although Obama visited the Gulf Coast instead of flying over the area
as George W. Bush did in 2005, the pictures do not grasp a more commit-
ted stance. Archival footage shows him walking on the beach, inspecting
the traces of oil on the sand with a hand in his pocket, displaying what
Douglas Brinkley calls a “Dr Spock-like kind of cool collected control” (in
reference to New York Times journalist Maureen Dowd’s characterization

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 The Legacy of Black Nationalism / 145

of the president) which seemed out of place to most observers [IGIW,

Part 2, 01:19:41]. Cedric Johnson contends that Barack Obama’s political
convictions do not represent an ideological rupture with George W. Bush’s,
which was revealed by his attitude to the crisis on the Gulf Coast.117 The
author evokes Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, including the
creation of “a state-funded and state-managed public works project”118
providing temporary jobs to displaced residents, to suggest what could
have been done to counter BP’s abuses of power—including the use of
Corexyl dispersant chemicals which are banned in Great Britain due to
their toxicity and deleterious effects on the environment.
Lee’s environmental concern is conveyed by his interviewees, among
whom features Lisa Margonelli who retraces the path of oil from the
Niger Delta to America’s gas stations in her book Oil on the Brain,119
addressing a wake-up call to Americans whose oil consumption growth
has increased the country’s dependence on regions of the world viewed
as politically unstable.120 As founder of New America Foundation Ener-
gy Policy Initiative, she addresses a warning against BP slogan “Beyond
Petroleum” which urges the consumer to think of oil as clean energy
instead of the pollution in the Niger Delta: “If you go to Nigeria, the
oil comes out of a place called the Niger Delta and it’s about the size of
England. And basically every year since 1969, they’ve had the equivalent
of the Exxon Valdez spill.” [IGIW, Part 2, 01:03:00] Lee cuts to images of
the Niger Delta illustrating Margonelli’s statement, which serve to rein-
force her arguments.
The various types of footage interwoven in the narrative, shifting
from television news archive to original filming material, display the
gap between the official records of the situation which tend to downplay
the crisis and the subjective responses among witnesses who feel over-
whelmed. The film includes a two-minute sequence composed of grainy
footage of the Deepwater Horizon leak, representing each day passing
by from April 30, 2010, until July 15, 2010, when the hole was eventu-
ally capped [IGIW, Part 2, 01:37:00]. The repetitive musical tune creates
a stifling atmosphere, which contrasts with the reassuring tone of BP’s
public service announcement presented by Tony Hayward who puts forth
the rapid deployment of exceptional resources “to protect the shoreline”
[IGIW, Part 2, 01:17:10]. The inserted BP promotional sequence uses sleek
images of the coast in counterpoint to a soundtrack of waves booming and
seagulls shrieking, suggesting BP’s technologies will protect the wildlife
from the danger of the spill. The BP announcement sequence creates a
rupture within the documentary; it shows no sign of the spill apart from

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the cleanup teams ready to deploy their efforts; nor does it mention the
eleven men who died when the rig exploded. When Lee accompanies Wil-
liam Nungesser as he investigates the impact of the spill on the marshes,
lamenting about the lack of urgency he witnesses, one can only be struck
by the deadly silence around him: no BP team has started the clean-up,
no seagull can be heard around [IGIW, Part 2, 01:25:00]. As suggested
through this example, the filmmaker’s ethics of engagement urges him to
side with his interviewees in the face of injustice. Lee downplays his voice
to allow his filmed subjects to speak up.
Just as he repeated the same sequence three times when George W.
Bush congratulated Michael Brown for doing a “heck of a job” with FEMA
in When The Levees Broke, Lee repeats the same images of Tony Hayward’s
infamous declaration: “I want my life back” three times [IGIW, Part 2,
01:13:00]. The device highlights the cynical and insensitive character of
Tony Hayward, who took time off to attend a yacht race as oil gushed
into the Gulf.121 In opposition to his self-complaining and detached com-
ments, Lee honors the memory of the eleven dead victims by introduc-
ing their portraits along with personal details, thus outlining the dangers
of offshore drilling. Bloomberg news reporters Stanley Reed and Alison
Fitzgerald explain that BP’s corporate culture “depends on and even cel-
ebrates calculated risk-taking,”122 valuing the profits generated over the
safety of complex and dangerous operations.123 Although BP laid stress
on individual safety, standards were repeatedly laid down in process safe-
ty—which was revealed by a series of accidents staining the company’s
image in the last ten years. Douglas Brinkley draws a list of accidents
which should have prompted BP to take precautionary measures and the
Minerals Management Service (known as the MMS) to enforce stronger
regulatory measures: “BP, in 2005, they had a blow-up in Texas City and
were sued. 14 men lost their lives. In 2006 in Alaska, up in the North
Slope they were taking oil out spilling it over all the tundra which is an
incredibly environmentally sensitive area. The blow-up of the Deepwater
Horizon was their third major industrial accident in the U.S. on a five-
year period. It is pure negligence.” [IGSW, Part 2, 54:10] The media focus
on Tony Hayward’s statement divested attention from the political context
that made it possible for BP to drill off the shore of Louisiana which,
however, Lee’s interviewees are keen to examine.
This part of the documentary widens the appeal of Spike Lee’s mili-
tant piece to a larger audience than his previous films. The environmental
concern of the film’s participants is no longer tied to race; they evoke a
situation that impacts all levels of society. Scientist Ivor Van Heerden

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compares the Gulf Coast spill to the incident that caused the deaths of coal
miners in West Virginia on April 7, 2010, for both illustrate the criminal
practices of corporate governance: “It is my understanding from the coal
mining incident in West Virginia that safety regulations were ignored. It
is my understanding from what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico right
now that potential safety issues could have been brought into play into the
regulations but were ignored.” [IGIW, Part 2, 01:03:00] Not only do the
interviewees blame the corporation’s greed, but they also point to notori-
ous cases of corruption within the Minerals Management Service (“scan-
dals involving gifts and sex” [IGIW, Part 2, 01:02:00]), which regulates
environment and labor safety in the oil and gas industry. Spike Lee’s film
echoes the environmental documentary produced by David Guggenheim
and Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (2005), in so far as the environmental
crisis is presented in terms of economic and political choices. At a time
when George W. Bush was still denying the effect of climate change, Al
Gore discussed the existing scientific evidence about global warming in
a film that unexpectedly brought him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
Lee’s interviewees expose the moral and political contradictions of
local and national governance while underlining the president’s retreat
from public responsibility for the general welfare of American citizenry.
Such disasters as Katrina provided a golden opportunity to neoliberal
advocates who took advantage of the chaos to privatize former public ser-
vices. Spike Lee’s portrayal of New Orleans reconstruction illustrates this
analysis: housing projects have been replaced by mixed-income housing,
built by contractors whose employees are low-paid immigrants; the new
hospital project which is to replace Charity Hospital will introduce more
private medical practice; FEMA trailers were mass-produced and built by
subcontractors with substandard materials, including formaldehyde which
caused many residents to fall ill [IGIW, Part 1, 01:11:00]; state money was
made available for the opening of casinos, not for libraries [IGIW, Part
1, 01:36:00]. The opening of charter schools provides another interesting
example of neoliberalism which, Cedric Johnson further argues, “is a form
of world-making predicated on the abatement of labor rights, social pro-
vision, public amenities, environment regulations, and other artifacts of
social democracy deemed impediments to capital accumulation.”124
By endorsing the anti-corporation stance of his participants, Lee
joins a fight that allows him to reach out to a larger crowd of viewers
than the racial angle advocated in his former committed filmmaking.
Serge Halimi referred to the variety of characters Robert Greenwald inter-
viewed for the making of Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005)

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as “American patriots,”125 considering that the fight against Wal-Mart was

able to gather both Republicans and Democrats: small businessmen and
Wal-Mart employees, be they male or female, black or white, may speak
from various standpoints, all of them suffer from the discriminatory
policies and the marketing strategies that define the corporation’s ethics.
The film investigates the dramatic consequences of Wal-Mart’s industrial,
environmental, and labor practices on the lives of Americans who either
compete with the corporation or work for it. The corporation’s excessive
practices undermine the ethos of self-enterprise in America’s free trade
economy, which allows Robert Greenwald to widen his audience beyond
the progressive base. The approach to reconstruction in New Orleans has
been underpinned by a commitment to neoliberal, free market principles
which have neither alleviated racial tension nor promoted social equality,
thus leaving lingering issues of crime and corruption unsettled.
Lee’s documentaries on New Orleans articulate a highly subjective
version of the truth, which can be illustrated by a comparison with Luisa
Dantas’s five-year-long investigation of reconstruction in New Orleans in
Land of Opportunity (2010–2011).126 Serving as creative mentor for her
project and using some of her footage in his own documentary series,
Lee tries to put a positive spin on the African-American experience of
reconstruction by underlining the actions of activists between 2005 and
2010, whereas Dantas gives voice to all the victims of neoliberal policies,
including low-paid Latino workers and lower-class African Americans,
proposing an even darker view of the new New Orleans. Land of Oppor-
tunity encompasses a web platform that was developed to further the
viewing experience of the documentary, inviting browsers to probe other
Internet sources that broaden their perspectives on the issues addressed
by the filmed participants.127 The title of the whole project ironically sug-
gests that New Orleans turned into a Land of Opportunity after Hurricane
Katrina washed over the city, creating a sort of tabula rasa on which new
projects could be experimented unhindered by the past. The documen-
tary, however, points to the legacy of a geography of class as the camera
captures the power relations that are ingrained in the landscape of a city
divided along racial lines. Making herself invisible behind the camera,
Luisa Dantas offers her footage as raw documents that provide evidence
of an ongoing process of gentrification—which Lee also condemned in a
recent public address in Brooklyn.128

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 Conclusion

From made-for-television documentaries to big-budget blockbusters, the

sheer variety of Spike Lee’s films reflects his struggle to combine art and
commerce, prompting us to explore the tension between profit and crea-
tivity which characterizes his career. Unlike Oscar Micheaux with whom
he is sometimes compared,1 Lee will not content himself with a shoestring
budget that would confine his filmmaking to the margins of the film
industry. He is an impassioned entrepreneur, who diversified his produc-
tion into several businesses (40 Acres and a Mule, Spike DDB), dealing
with independent (Island Pictures), mini-major (New Line, HBO, Search-
light), and major studios (Universal, Warner Brothers, Sony).2 Spike Lee
embodies the businessman as artist who makes creativity happen,3 over-
riding the limits between art and commerce when turning his characters
into consumers promoting brands and his advertising videos into artis-
tic short films. His models are African-American cultural icons, whose
careers illustrate a reversal of power between blacks and whites. Spike
Lee actively promoted his latest documentary Bad 25, giving enthusiastic
interviews about Michael Jackson, whose musical and artistic creativity he
endeavored to spotlight after scandals deflected attention away from his
achievement. While the aggressive marketing strategies developed behind
such blockbusters as Malcolm X (1992) and Inside Man (2006) may par-
tially account for their box-office success, the persona of Spike Lee as a
“sellebrity” allows the studios to capitalize on his auteurist reputation.4
Lee sells his name like a brand that signifies aesthetic characteristics and
commercial ethics, which is best defined by his pragmatic approach to the
business of making films. His longevity is related to his ability to navigate
the constraints of production,5 which he more often than not manages to
circumvent in order to leave his creative imprint on the films that bear his
signature. Identified as products of his own company 40 Acres and a Mule,
his nonfiction “joints” also exhibit his trademark shots—including the
dolly camera movements that are associated with his fiction filmmaking.

149

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Lee assumes the position of a go-between (echoing the role of

Mookie played by Lee himself in Do the Right Thing), wilfully accepting
to direct advertising campaigns for the corporations that wish to tap into
the African-American community. His latest promotional videos depict
a world in which African Americans buy luxury cars like the trendy
Chevrolet and Jaguar models, offering the audience an idealized image
of a multicultural society in which African Americans have climbed up
the social ladder. While the firms he works for use his name to target
a niche market, Lee exploits these advertising opportunities to portray
inspiring models of success, ironically selling the American dream as a
fantasy world. As a filmmaker whose art depends on the money he is
able to garner, Lee defends his market share by advancing the African
Americans’ consumers’ rights. Although documentaries usually require a
lesser budget than fiction films, involving neither professional actors nor
constructed setting, they do not represent an especially distinct approach
to the business of filmmaking for the director. Lee’s thematic and eco-
nomic concerns straddle his fiction and nonfiction projects, combining
his fascination with such subjects as basketball with the need to make
profitable films. Thus such films as Kobe Doin’ Work (2009), produced
by and for the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN),
demonstrate that documentaries can serve moneymaking goals. However,
Lee’s documentaries are based on investigations that more often than not
challenge his commercial ethics, pointing to the distance between the
filmmaker’s middle class values and the real-life problems his interlocutors
testify about. When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts exposed
race and class inequalities by revealing the plight of the African-American
poor who could not flee New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina struck
whereas If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise captured the enduring
geographical traces of segregation on the landscape, pinpointing the race
and class dynamics of policymaking.
Lee’s political commitment prompts him to spotlight African Amer-
icans’ active roles in the historical narrative of the nation: whether he
retraces the ideological and psychological path of the Black Panthers’ lead-
er Huey P. Newton or focuses on a tragic history of racist violence and
oppression through Four Little Girls, Lee highlights positive role models
among African Americans. Rather than depict black history as a tale of
victimization, his nonfiction films emphasize the resilience of individuals
whose lives intertwine with the civil rights fight against racial prejudice
and socio-economic discrimination. If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t
Rise appears as a turning point in Lee’s documentary filmography, consid-

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ering that it clearly endorses leftist politics when analyzing the devastating
impact of the 2010 oil slick. The documentary addresses race and class
issues from a larger perspective than his previous works: Lee develops
what could be dubbed a “citizens’ documentary” articulating the concerns
of those who were affected by the neoliberal choices underpinning recon-
struction in New Orleans—most of them being African Americans. The
film is divided into two parts which gather a group of citizen activists
among the interviewees who, while addressing such issues as education,
housing, labor and crime on a local level, testify to broader national and
international economic dynamics. Interestingly, Spike Lee takes advantage
of his own position within the media spectrum to produce an alternative
historical, social, and racial discourse.
Lee has joined other “engaged celebrities” who use their fame to
assume a public critical voice in the context of protest, defining their “civic
role as the result of a direct relation with a public: the symbolic coup at
work is based on the equivalence state between ‘having audiences’ and
‘having constituencies,’ justifying the self-assignation of an ability/legitima-
cy to speak for others, especially for voiceless people.”6 French sociologist
Violaine Roussel analyzed the commitment of artists at the beginning of
the Iraq War (2003) and posited that the professionals’ position of stabi-
lized success and great renown placed them “out of reach” as regards the
potential harmful professional outcomes of their political involvement.7
These artists demanded a political voice and asserted their civic roles both
through their art and outside of their professional activities. Lee’s commit-
ment also extends beyond the screen: he attended protests over the death of
black youth Ammadou Diallo, who was shot dead by police officers outside
his home in the Bronx; he regularly took part in anti-war rallies in 2003
and never failed to criticize George W. Bush’s policies—including in his
Hollywood-produced Inside Man which incorporates a scene evoking the
excesses of the Patriot Act. Krin Gabbard suggests that Lee has willingly
assumed the role of spokesperson for African Americans after directing
political advertisements for Jesse Jackson in 1988:

Lee has accepted this advocate’s role by appearing frequently on

news and talk shows and consenting to regular interviews. He
may still be the only black filmmaker to make this transition:
it is difficult to imagine Mario van Peebles, Charles Burnett,
or the artist formerly known as Prince (the auteur of two films
in his own right) discussing race relations with Ted Koppel
on Nightline.8

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152 / The Spike Lee Brand

Lee’s activist voice is vicariously embodied on screen by such public fig-

ures as Douglas Brinkley, who personifies the “engaged intellectual,” and
well-known personalities who have become icons of social and civic per-
formances in contemporary Hollywood. Brad Pitt has financially contrib-
uted to rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward by investing time and money
in the Make It Right Foundation whereas Sean Penn took physical risks
by visiting New Orleans in the days that followed Katrina when people
were still waiting to be evacuated. If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t
Rise incorporates footage of Sean Penn running aid operations in Haiti,
highlighting the practical actions that define his activist commitment.9
While other filmmakers have been able to capitalize on their polit-
ical commitments, even when they gave rise to polemics and criticism,10
Lee’s engagement with issues of race has often been questioned in the
light of commercial productions that make him an icon of late capital-
ism.11 Kobe Doin’ Work represents a flagrant example of corruption of Lee’s
activist stance given that the documentary unquestioningly contributes
to the mythification of the basketball star and to the commodification
of sports. Although one may posit that Kobe Bryant’s voice-over conveys
his alienation from the world around basketball, including his audience,
thus stimulating the schizophrenic atmosphere of playing as a profes-
sional for the NBA, the film celebrates his stereotypical masculinity as an
African-American athlete whose fetishistic commodification is absolute.
Contrary to such film directors as Haile Gerima and Charles Burnett, Lee
has chosen to integrate the system which (re)produces the racial dynam-
ics he endeavors to overturn. It is however a controversial stance: Lee
gained more visibility thanks to a compromised political stance, which
forces him to navigate between business deals and personal engagements.
Cultural critic George Nelson contends that his political commitment is
not tarnished by his commercial career:

There is a nationalist underpinning to his financial and creative

activities, yet Spike has no problem doing business with corpo-
rate America. His entrepreneurial integration has led him into
ongoing business relationships with Nike, Universal, Barneys,
the Gap, Levi Strauss, and Simon & Shuster. She’s (sic) was very
much a guerrilla enterprise that was distributed by Island, then
a maverick studio. Ever since, Spike has worked with major
studios and national advertisers. Is there a contradiction in
this? In the face of modern corporate infotainment monoliths,
the most realpolitik counterstrategy is to be in business with as

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 Conclusion / 153

many as possible. Diversifying protects you against co-optation

by any single corporate entity and industry.12

The scholar emphasizes Lee’s practical approach to filmmaking: had he

not developed his own production company and increased his financial
resources, his commitment would have been confined to the margins
of minority filmmaking. Because his name connotes a share of the film
market, Lee has been able to overcome the limits imposed on minori-
ty directors in Hollywood. Drawing on a series of interviews conduct-
ed with filmmakers working in the film industry, Jack Rothman points
out the specific issues African-American directors have to contend with:
“Some directors lamented that once classified a minority filmmaker, a
director is marginalized, since studios assume that minority-themed
films will only appeal to minority audience. The studios make relatively
few of these ethnic-themed films, believing that mainstream audiences
will stay away—which results in tightly confined opportunities for these
directors.”13 Minority filmmakers’ careers are constrained by the ethnic
perspective they are expected to endorse. In other words, their creativity
is restrained by their being labelled as minority filmmakers.
The path Lee has chosen is not open to all minority filmmakers:14
he has managed to broaden his audience by straddling entertainment
and commitment while engaging with the commercial and the not-for-
profit. In his 1993 study entitled Framing Blackness, The African American
Image in Film, Ed Guerrero hailed Lee’s engagement to representing the
authentic experience of African Americans, which he qualified as auteur-
ism, and simultaneously feared a “drift toward a contained, mainstream
sensibility.”15 Lee’s documentaries demonstrate the opposite: he has been
able to bank on the financial success of his films when incorporating the
mainstream of commercial cinema to advance issues of race. Not only
do his nonfiction films contribute to the struggle for representation that
undergirds African-American filmmaking, but his latest filmic investi-
gation into the reconstruction of New Orleans also suggests that Lee’s
activism has not weakened. Lee interrogates the media-framed images of
Katrina by juxtaposing television extracts with interview snippets, creat-
ing a dialectical search for truth through the interplay of oral and visual
narratives.
The filmmaker has adopted an increasingly pragmatic stance by
broadening the civil rights fight beyond the color line, allowing a com-
munity of citizens to find a voice in his films. However, he will not relin-
quish lucrative contracts as suggested by Kobe Doin’ Work, accepting the

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154 / The Spike Lee Brand

compromise between money and engagement as the only path to gar-

ner sufficient influence in Hollywood to remain a politically committed
filmmaker.
As he agreed to follow the genealogical guidelines adopted in the
television program “Who Do You Think You Are” on NBC (April 30,
2010), Lee offered to investigate into his mother’s slavery roots. After the
genealogical journey made him travel from the Georgia State Archives to
Twiggs County, where he was able to step on the land that once belonged
to his great-great-grandfather, he discovered that his grandmother’s moth-
er Lucinda was born into slavery to Matilda Griswold. Identified as a
mulatto in the archival records, Matilda has Lee mull over his possible
family connection with the white slave-owner (Samuel Griswold) who
might have fathered her. The mulatto woman was registered as working
for the slaveholder’s daughter (Eliza Grier), whose descendent (Guinevere
Grier) may therefore be related to him as a third cousin. The genealogical
research leads to the encounter between Spike Lee and Guinevere Grier,
which provides an emotional climax in the program: as the two sit on a
couch discussing ancestors they may have in common, they raise aware-
ness to the complexities of American history and to the enduring power
of repressed family stories.
The Spike Lee brand defines both the limits and the scope of the
filmmaker’s work, signifying Lee’s commitment to exploring racial issues
while making financially profitable films. “Who Do You Think You Are”
reveals striking similarities between Spike Lee’s commercial commitment
and his great-great-grandfather’s, whose name (Mars Jackson) ironically
refers to the character She’s Gotta Have it and Nike commercials made
famous (Mars Blackmon). Mars Jackson exploited more than eighty acres
of land as a farmer who became a landowner in the wake of the 40 Acres
and a Mule order, thus reflecting Lee’s belief in economic empowerment.
The television program sheds light on a hidden story in Lee’s own past,
which may unconsciously bear on his view of the world as expressed in
his film endeavors.

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 Notes

Foreword

1. Nelson George, “The Foreword to He’s Gotta Have It” in Spike Lee,
Spike Lee’s Gotta Have It: Inside Guerrilla Filmmaking (New York: Simon & Schus-
ter, Inc., 1987), 15.

Introduction

1. R. Colin Tait, “Politics, Class and Allegory in Spike Lee’s Inside Man”
in ed. Mark A. Reid, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1997), 41–60.
2. Janet K. Cutler and Phyllis R. Klotman, “Introduction,” eds. Phyllis
R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler, Struggles for Representation (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1999), xvii.
3. Clyde Taylor, “Paths of Enlightenment: Heroes, Rebels and Thinkers,”
Ibid., 142.
4. PBS co-produced the film, along with the African American Center,
and has developed several resource pages on its website: <http://www.pbs.org/
hueypnewton/huey.html> (accessed on February 8, 2014).
5. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 2001, 2010), xiii.
6. Matt Singer, review of Bad 25. See <http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/
did-spike-lee-make-two-movies-this-year-about-michael-jackson#comments>
(accessed on February 11, 2014).
7. David Sterritt, Spike Lee’s America (Cambridge, UK/Malden USA: Pol-
ity Press, 2013), 171.
8. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 1.
9. Gary Crowdus and Dan Georgakas, “Thinking about the Power of
Images: An Interview with Spike Lee,” Cineaste 26, 2 (2001), 9.

155

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156 / Notes to Chapter 1

10. The duties of the griot “included those of historian, reporter, adviser and
story-teller.” Sheila Curran Bernard, Documentary Storytelling, Making Stronger
and More Dramatic Nonfiction Films (Burlington, MA: Elsevier Inc., 2007), 13.
11. Jean-Louis Comolli, Voir et pouvoir, L’innocence perdue: cinéma, télévi-
sion, fiction, documentaire (Paris: Editions Verdier, 2004), 153.
12. Marc Ferro, Cinema and History, translated by Naomi Greene (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1988), 29.
13. Ibid.
14. Mark P. Orbe and A. Elizabeth Lyons, “Spike Lee as Entrepreneur:
Leveraging 40 Acres and a Mule” in eds. Janice D. Hamlet and Robin R. Means
Coleman, Fight the Power, The Spike Lee Reader (New York: Peter Lang, 2009),
378.
15. “While Lee’s project is thus under the sign of history, it seeks a certain
relief from the burden of history and the weight of memory via his logo, ‘a Spike
Lee Joint,’ which signals the sightlessness and memoryless floating realm of com-
modity and sign production of late 20th century America.” Laleen Jayamanne,
Toward Cinema and its Double: Cross-Cultural Mimesis (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 2001), 241.

Chapter 1

1. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 6.

2. Ibid., 42.
3. Ibid., 65.
4. Ibid., 60. Bill Nichols borrows the terms “social actors” from sociologist
Ervin Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) to point out the
self-conscious pose of the documentary participants. I will use the same term in
this text, considering like Nichols that: “People are treated as social actors rather
than professional actors. [. . .] Their value resides not in the ways in which they
disguise or transform their everyday behaviour and personality but in ways in
which their everyday behaviour and personality serve the needs of the filmmak-
er.” Ibid., 8.
5. “The film is dedicated to the families of victims of police brutality:
Eleanor Bumpurs, an old black woman who was evicted from her apartment;
Michael Steward, strangled like Radio Raheem by a choke hold; Arthur Miller, a
black entrepreneur who was the victim of mistaken identities, unjustly arrested
and beaten up, and in 1978, died as a result of the beating.” Catherine Pouzoulet,
“The Cinema of Spike Lee: Images of a Mosaic City” in ed. Mark A. Reid, Spike
Lee’s Do the Right Thing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 36.
6. Catherine Pouzoulet, “The Cinema of Spike Lee: Images of a Mosaic
City” in Ibid., 36.
7. Catherine Pouzoulet comments on the highly stylized representation
of Bed-Stuy which she depicts as “a warped vision of the actual social scene in
the 1990s.” Ibid., 34.

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 Notes to Chapter 1 / 157

8. Keith M. Harris, “Clockers (Spike Lee, 1995): Adaptation in Black” in

ed. Paula Massood, The Spike Lee Reader (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University
Press, 2007).133.
9. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 162.
10. Errol Morris explains that his documentaries involve the type of
research he could had done as a private-eye investigator in his youth: “Finding
truth involves some kind of activity. As I like to point out, truth isn’t handed to
you on a platter. It’s not something that you get at a cafeteria, where they just
put it on your plate. It’s a search, a quest, an investigation, a continual process
of looking at and looking for evidence, trying to figure out what the evidence
means.” Errol Morris, Interview with The Believer, April 2004. <http://www.errol-
morris.com/content/interview/believer0404.html> (accessed on March 18, 2014).
11. “New modes signal less a better way to represent the historical world
than a new way to organize a film, a new perspective on our relation to real-
ity, and a new set of issues and desires to preoccupy an audience.” Bill Nichols,
Introduction to Documentary, 162.
12. In 1968, Fred Hampton founded the Chicago chapter of the Black Pan-
ther Party. He developed community service programs such as a free breakfast for
children program and free medical services clinic. On December 4, 1969, while
everyone was asleep at party headquarters, he was murdered in a police raid that
also killed Mark Clark. The sequence includes footage of his coffin.
13. Jeff Ferrel, Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality
(New York: Garland Publishing, 1993), 183.
14. Michael Renov, “Introduction: The Truth About NonFiction” in ed.
Michael Renov, Theorizing Documentary (New York & London: Routledge, 1993),
2.
15. Lee borrows the musical score of Inside Man for the soundtrack of
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, ironically commenting on his
twofold career: the two films were made at the same time (2006), yet they repre-
sent two parallel tracks. Paula J. Massood opposes the commercial entertainment
venture to the made-for-television documentary about Katrina’s destruction and
reconstruction of New Orleans, thereby trying to account for the controversies
surrounding the filmmaker: “Lee’s fiction films upset the compact between Holly-
wood and spectators because they ask uncomfortable questions of their audience
(both black and white) rather than entertain them; in this sense, they are difficult.
His non-fiction films, by contrast, are expected to be historical and informative,
and therefore visibility is a virtue rather than a limitation.” Paula J. Massood,
“Introduction” in ed. Paula J. Massood, The Spike Lee Reader, xxv–xxvi.
16. “Joseph Michael Gratale on Jane Chapman’s Issues in Contemporary
Documentary,” European journal of American studies, Reviews 2010–11. <http://
ejas.revues.org/7817> (accessed on February 1, 2014).
17. “This form of documentary is founded on participants’ stories, and it
is the fact that viewers are given access to the real world through the narratives
of social actor that makes the authorial voice more the product of a partnership
with the filmmaker, although control of the message still ultimately resides with

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158 / Notes to Chapter 1

the latter in the selection and arrangement of the actors, what they say, and how
long they are given to say it, even if participants are provided with the space
to tell their stories at their own pace.” Jane Chapman, Issues in Contemporary
Documentary (Cambridge and Malden, UK: Polity Press, 2009), 104.
18. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 203.
19. Phyllis Montana-Leblanc and Spike Lee, Not Just the Levees Broke: My
Story During and After Hurricane Katrina (New York: Atria Books, 2009).
20. J. Steven Picou and Brent K. Marshall, “Introduction: Katrina as Para-
digm Shift: Reflections on Disaster Research in the 21st Century” in David L.
Brunsma, David Overfelt, J. Steven Picou, The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives
on a Modern Catastrophe, 16.
21. Douglas Kellner presents Michael Moore as: “A unique character in
popular culture, himself, and a unique genre of filmmaking, the personal witness-
ing, questing and agit-prop interventionist film that explores issues, takes strong
critical point of view, and targets villains and evils in U.S. society.” Douglas Kell-
ner, “Michael Moore and the Aesthetic and Politics of Contemporary Documen-
tary Film” in ed. Matthew H. Bernstein, Michael Moore: Filmmaker, Newsmaker,
Cultural Icon (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 100.
22. Sheila Curran Bernard, Documentary Storytelling, Making Stronger and
More Dramatic Nonfiction Films, 130.
23. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 30.
24. Sociology assistant Professor Gary Perry questions H.U.D’s spending
and politics: “The Department of Housing and Urban Development has spent
around $500.000 to board up and demolish public housing units, preventing
working-class residents—largely Black women and children from reclaiming their
homes.” Garry Perry, “New Orleans Survivors: a People Without a Home” in Free-
dom Socialist, August 2007. <http://www.socialism.com/drupal-6.8/?q=node/513>
(accessed on February 3, 2014).
25. The city appears to be segregated by income more than by race since
Lee interviews many Whites among the victims. However the archive footage of
the Superdome and the Convention Center show a majority of blacks.
26. Jasmine Nichole Cobb and John L. Jackson, “They Hate Me, Spike Lee,
Documentary Filmmaking and Hollywood’s ‘Savage Slot,’ ” in eds. Janice D. Ham-
let and Robin R. Means Coleman, Fight the Power, The Spike Lee Reader, (New
York: Peter Lang, 2009), 264.
27. Janet Walker, “Rights and return: perils and fantasies of situated testi-
mony after Katrina” in eds. Bhaskar Sarkar and Janet Walker, Documentary Tes-
timonies, Global Archives of Suffering (New York/Oxon: Routledge, 2010), 84–86.
28. Jane Chapman, Issues in Contemporary Documentary, 106.
29. Ellen C. Scott, “Sounding Black, Cultural Identification, Sound, and the
Films of Spike Lee” in eds. Janice D. Hamlet and Robin R. Means Coleman, Fight
the Power, The Spike Lee Reader, 227.
30. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 158–159.

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 Notes to Chapter 1 / 159

31. Quoted in Peter Rubie, The Elements of Narrative Nonfiction, How to

Write and Sell the Novel of True Events (Fresno, California: Quill Driver Books,
2003, 2009), 2–3.
32. Peter Marks, “A Huey P. Newton Story” in the New York Times, Theater
Reviews, February 13, 1997.
33. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 199.
34. The opening sequence epitomizes the film’s use of archive material.
Roger Guenveur Smith comments on the collaborative effort behind the editing
choice: researcher Leanne Clifton provided hours of documentary material, from
which we might choose imagery to strategically accompany the performance.
Spike respected the integrity of the play and didn’t want the archive shots to be
distracting, but including a very carefully selected number of them would layer
the project with a cinematic and historical nuance. Disembodied voices from the
original sound design became reunited with their talking heads, Richard Pryor,
William F. Buckley, and Huey’s mother among them. Obvious choices such as
Black Orpheus, Huey’s favorite film, were included, as well as odd cameos from
Marlon Brando, speaking at Little Bobby Hutton’s funeral, and Orson Welles,
making himself up to play Macbeth, whom he describes as “a gangster with
a conscience.” <http://www.ahueypnewtonstory.com/revolution/revolution_jour-
ney.html> (accessed on February 12, 2014).
35. Lee qualifies basketball as an “art form” when recalling the style of such
players as Alcindor and Tiny who made it “an entertainment spectacle, whose
athletic artistry and creativity lifted pro hoop from the distant outpost of its ori-
gins and ethnic urban subculture base into the world-wide consciousness today.”
Spike Lee and Ralph Wiley, The Best Seat in the House: A Basketball Memoir (New
York: Random House Inc., 1998), 23.
36. Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle (London and New York: Routledge,
2003), 68.
37. Douglas Kellner, “The Sports Spectacle, Michael Jordan, and Nike” in
eds. Patrick B. Miller and David K. Wiggins, Sport and the Color Line, Black
Athletes and Race Relations in Twentieth-Century America (New York & London:
Routledge, 2004), 307.
38. Ben Carrington, Race, Sports and Politics: the Sporting Black Diaspora
(London: Sage Publications Inc., 2010), 86.
39. Cheryl L. Cole, “America Jordan: P.L.A.Y., Consensus, and Punishment,”
Sociology of Sport Journal, 13, 4 (1996), 366–397.
40. “Whereas drama-documentary attempts to align itself with documentary
in order to validate its claims to truth, mock-documentary utilizes the aesthetics of
documentary to undermine such claims to truth. [. . .] In general terms, the mock-
documentary filmmaker seeks to construct a particular relationship with factual
discourse which often involves a reflexive stance with regard to the documentary
genre.” Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight, Faking it, Mock Documentary and the Subver-
sion of Factuality, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 46–47.

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160 / Notes to Chapter 2

41. “A conspiracy theory creates and ties together a series of events in rela-
tions of cause and effect. Conspiracy is predicated on uncovering a specific form
of order and structure.” Martin Parker, “Human science as conspiracy theory” in
eds. Jane Paris and Martin Parker, The Age of Anxiety: Conspiracy Theory and the
Human Sciences (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 193.
42. When the Levees Broke explores the “performative mode” of the docu-
mentary, in which “a key focus becomes the prioritization of the subjective aspects
of documentary accounts of reality. These texts are heavily stylized and quite
consciously blur the boundaries between fact and fiction.” Jane Roscoe and Craig
Hight, Faking it, Mock Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality, 46–47.
43. Sheila Curran Bernard, Documentary Storytelling, Making Stronger and
More Dramatic Nonfiction Films, 3.
44. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 30.

Chapter 2

1. Marc Ferro, Cinema and History, 29.

2. Amiri Baraka, “Malcolm as Ideology” in ed. Joe Wood, Malcolm X: In
Our Own Image (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), 21.
3. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire”
in eds. Geneviève Fabre and Robert O’ Meally, History and Memory in African-
American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 290.
4. “Mass culture makes particular memories more widely available, so
that people who have no ‘natural’ claim to them might nevertheless incorporate
them into their own archive of experience.” Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory,
The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 9.
5. Ibid., 2–3.
6. Paul Ricœur, Temps et récit, Tome 1: L’intrigue et le récit historique
(Paris: Le Seuil, 1983).
7. “The strategies of forgetting are directly grafted upon this work of con-
figuration: one can always recount, by eliminating, by shifting the emphasis, by
recasting the protagonists of the action in a different light along with the outlines
of the action. [. . .] The resource of narrative then becomes the trap, when higher
powers take over the emplotment and impose a canonical narrative by means of
intimidation or seduction, fear or flattery. A devious form of forgetting is at work
here, resulting from stripping the social actors of their original power to recount
their actions themselves.” Paul Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting, translated
by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2004, 2006), 448.
8. Ibid., 648.
9. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (1941), edited, translated
by Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992), 60.

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 Notes to Chapter 2 / 161

10. Ibid., 64.

11. James L. Baggett, “Sixteenth Street Baptist Church” in eds. Leslie M.
Alexander and Walter C. Rucker, Encyclopedia of African American History, Vol-
ume 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2010), 1027–1029.
12. Renee C. Romano notices that “the Justice Department [. . .] moved to
restart their investigation of the bombing shortly after the release of Spike Lee’s
documentary. The film helped put the bombing case back on the national agenda
and it created pressure to bring the bombers to justice.” Renee C. Romano, “Nar-
ratives of Redemption, The Birmingham Church Bombing Trials and the Con-
struction of Civil Rights Memory” in eds. Renee C. Romano and Leigh Raiford,
The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, (Athens, GA: The University of
Georgia Press, 2006), 109.
13. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduc-
tion,” in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 236.
14. Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1979), 15.
15. Ibid., 16.
16. Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament, translated by Thomas Y. Levin
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 51. First edition: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1963.
17. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, translated by Richard Howard (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 64.
18. Ibid., 109.
19. Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977),
44.
20. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 71.
21. Valerie Smith, “Remembering Birmingham Sunday, Spike Lee’s 4 Little
Girls” in eds. Deborah E. Barker and Kathryn McKee, American Cinema and the
Southern Imaginary, 187.
22. Susan Sontag, On Photography, (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia
Press, 2011), 15.
23. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed, Reflections of the Ontology of Film
(Cambridge, MA; London, England: Harvard University Press, 1971, 1974, 1979),
200.
24. Martin A. Berger, Seeing Through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights
Photography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Berkeley Press, 2011), 141.
The author adds: “The white media showed greater interest and sympathy for
black victims who were female (and presumably less politically active and physi-
cally threatening) but that coverage managed to generate white emotion by down-
playing the motivations for the crime.” Ibid.
25. Valerie Smith, “Remembering Birmingham Sunday, Spike Lee’s 4 Little
Girls” in eds. Deborah E. Barker and Kathryn McKee, American Cinema and
the Southern Imaginary (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2011),
189–190.
26. Ibid., 191.

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162 / Notes to Chapter 2

27. Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Mean-
ing of Oral and Public History (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
1990), 293.
28. “I recalled having to explain to my Professors and to my friends every
single day that all of Birmingham hadn’t erupted in violence and in fact it was
awfully hard to explain how I didn’t really think that fire hoses wasn’t the worst
thing that could have happened compared to firearms, certainly compared to
killing and beating.”
29. “For hundreds of years white men in America positioned themselves as
the only “true” men in this country. They attempted to emasculate (both literally
and metaphorically) men of color by stripping them of the economic wherewithal
and social standing to support and protect their families.” Steve Estes, I am a
Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill and London:
The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 186.
30. Marc Bloch, translated by Peter Putnam, The Historian’s Craft (Man-
chester: Manchester University Press, 1992; first edition: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954),
160. Marc Bloch gives the following example to illustrate his point: “The virus of
the Black Death was the prime cause of the depopulation of Europe. But the epi-
demic spread so rapidly only by virtue of certain social—and, therefore, in their
underlying nature, mental—conditions, and its moral effects are to be explained
only by the peculiar propensities of collective sensibility.” Ibid., 160.
31. Owen J. Dwyer gives the example of Kelly Ingram Park, which was con-
verted from a once-segregated park into a ‘Place of Revolution and Reconciliation’
in 1992. Owen J. Dwyer, “Interpreting the Civil Rights Movement: Contradiction,
confirmation, and the Cultural Landscape” in eds. Renee C. Romano and Leigh
Raiford, The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, 7.
32. James Edward Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative
and the Consequences of Interpretation, 161.
33. Susannah Radstone, Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2010), 236.
34. George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular
Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 213.
35. Janet Walker, “Rights and return: perils and fantasies of situated tes-
timony after Katrina,” in eds. Bhaskar Sarkar and Janet Walker, Documentary
Testimonies, Global Archives of Suffering (New York/Oxon: Routledge, 2010), 95.
36. “A powerful discriminatory tendency in planning is for environmentally
vulnerable low-income neighborhoods to be deemed dispensable, whereas equally
vulnerable high-income neighborhoods are deemed indispensable because they
are more valuable.” Reilly Morse, “Environmental Justice Through the Eye of Hur-
ricane Katrina” (Washington DC, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies,
Inc., 2008). The document can be accessed online at <http://www.jointcenter.
org/hpi/sites/all/files/EnvironmentalJustice.pdf> (accessed on February 2, 2014).
37. R. W. Kates, C. E. Colten, S. Laska, and S. P. Leatherman, “Recon-
struction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: A Research Perspective” in

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 Notes to Chapter 2 / 163

PNAS October 3, 2006, vol. 103 no. 40, 14653–14654. <http://www.pnas.org/con-

tent/103/40/14653.full.pdf+html> (accessed on January 31, 2014).
38. John M. Barry comments: “I think there are too many similarities
between the 1927 flood and Katrina. For one thing, the levee policy of the federal
government—the flood protection policy of the federal government—was directly
responsible. I mean it was deeply flawed in 1927 and had been widely criticized.
The city of New Orleans had exercised its political muscle, and dynamited the
levee outside the city, flooded out its neighbors. And this wasn’t about race: it was
about money.”
39. John M. Barry, Rising Tide, The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How
it Changed America (New York: Simon and Schuster Paperback, 1998), 238–258.
40. The expository documentary offers “an economy of analysis, allowing
points to be made succinctly and emphatically, partly by eliminating reference
to the process by which knowledge is produced, organized, and regulated so that
it, too, is subject to the historical and ideological processes of which the film
speaks.” Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), 35.
41. Lee uses the documentary to allow his interviewees to regain some kind
of agency as they voice their theories of conspiracy: “The conspiracy narrative
foregrounds the cognitive act of interpretation as performed by both protagonist
and audience and suggests that the protagonist is able to re-establish his agency—
which, like that of everyone else, has been lost to the conspiracy—through cogni-
tion.” Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories, Secrecy and Power in American Culture,
Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2008 (First edition: 1999), 126.
42. The destruction of the levees was negotiated and reparation was planned
as part of the resolution presented by the governor on April 25, 1927: “The gov-
ernor signed first, followed by the mayor and the president of the Orleans Levee
Board; then Butler, president of the Canal Bank; Hecht, president of the Hibernia
Bank; then the presidents of the other banks. Fifty-seven men signed their names
to the pledge. Only six—the governor, the mayor, two councilmen, and two levee
board members—were public officials.” John M. Barry, Rising Tide, The Great
Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, 247–248.
43. Noam Chomsky defines conspiracy as the process of decision-making
among people who hold power: “There are doubtless cases in which people get
together; in fact, every example of planning decisions is a case where people
got together and used their power, or the power that they could draw from
to try to achieve a result. If you like that’s a conspiracy. With that definition,
everything that happens is a conspiracy.” This statement comes from an inter-
view with Michael Albert in Z Magazine, quoted by Alasdair Spark, “Conjuring
order: the new world order and conspiracy theories of globalization” in eds. Jane
Parish and Martin Parker, The Age of Anxiety: Conspiracy Theory and the Human
Sciences, 53.
44. Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories, Secrecy and Power in American Cul-
ture, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 120.

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45. Ibid., 10.

46. Martin Parker, “Human science as conspiracy theory,” 194.
47. Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge (New York: Harper Perennial,
2006).
48. Reilly Morse posits that “environment racism” prevailed in the settle-
ment pattern of the region; New Orleans’s landscape reflects the power relations
between and within the communities that settled in the city, dividing it into
various quarters according to ethnic and class dynamics. Morse argues that the
modern racial geography of New Orleans emerged after the Civil War when
“whites selected areas for Blacks to occupy that had various disadvantages, such
as flooding, unhealthy air, or inadequate streets, water and sewage. A typical geo-
graphic marginalization of Blacks was toward low-value, flood-prone swamplands
at the edge of the city, far from basic urban infrastructure, such as the origi-
nal Tremé.” Reilly Morse, “Environmental Justice Through the Eye of Hurricane
Katrina” (Wahington DC, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Inc.,
2008). The document can be accessed online: <http://www.jointcenter.org/hpi/
sites/all/files/EnvironmentalJustice.pdf> (accessed on February 2, 2014).
49. John M. Barry, Rising Tide, The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and
How it Changed America, 285–286, 313–317.
50. Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, Trauma, Narrative, and History
(Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1996), 17.
51. Thomas Doherty, Movie Review, The Journal of American History, 93, no.
3, December 2006, 997–999. <http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/3/997.2.
full> (accessed on March 11, 2014).
52. “In history everything begins with the gesture of setting aside, of put-
ting together, of transforming certain classified objects into ‘documents.’ This new
cultural distribution is the first task. In reality it consists in producing such docu-
ments by dint of copying, transcribing, or photographing these objects simultane-
ously changing their locus and their status. This gesture consists in ‘isolating’ a
body—as in physics—and ‘denaturing’ things in order to turn them into parts,
which will fill the lacunae inside an a priori totality.” Michel de Certeau, The
Writing of History, translated by Tom Conley (New York: Colombia University
Press, 1988), 72–73.
53. Manning Marable, Living Black History, How Reimagining the African-
American Past Can Remake America’s Racial Future (New York: Basic Civitas
Group, 2006), xx.
54. Ibid.
55. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003),
91.
56. Christine Acham, “We Shall Overcome: Preserving History and Mem-
ory in 4 Little Girls” in ed. Paula Massood, The Spike Lee Reader, 165.
57. Dora Apel, Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the
Mob (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 9.
58. See chapter 3 “The ‘Crime’ of Blackness: Lynching Imagery in The Cri-
sis” in Amy Helene Kirschke, Art in Crisis, W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle

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 Notes to Chapter 3 / 165

for African American Identity and Memory (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN:
Indiana University Press, 2007), 48–114.
59. Evie Shockley, “The Haunted Houses of New Orleans: Gothic Homeless-
ness and African American Experience” in eds. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’ Neil,
Jeffrey Dowd and Roland Anglin, Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in New
Orleans (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 104.
60. Nicole R. Fleetwood, “Failing Narratives, Initiating Technologies: Hur-
ricane Katrina and the Production of a Weather Media Event,” American Quarterly
58, no. 3, “Rewiring the ‘Nation’: The Place of Technology in American Studies”
(Sept., 2006), 774.
61. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Repro-
duction,” 236.
62. Anna Hartnell, “When the Levees Broke: Inconvenient Truths and the
Limits of National Identity” forthcoming African American Review 45.2 (2012).
63. Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary
Culture (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994, 2001), 38.

Chapter 3

1. Mark P. Orbe and A. Elizabeth Lyons, “Spike Lee as Entrepreneur:

Leveraging 40 Acres and a Mule” in eds. Janice D. Hamlet, Robin R. Means
Coleman, Fight the Power, The Spike Lee Reader, 378.
2. Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed (Chi-
cago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007). See the chapters on Migrant Mother
(49–92) and on Accidental Napalm (171–207).
3. Ibid., 36.
4. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 187.
5. Richard Dyer, “White” in Screen, 29, no. 4 (1988), 47.
6. Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 124–125.
7. Brian A. Monahan, The Shock of the News, Media Coverage and the
Making of 9/11 (New York and London: New York University Press, 2010), 3. See
my review of the book: Delphine Letort, “Brian A. Monahan, The Shock of the
News: Media Coverage and the Making of 9/11,” InMedia 2, 2012. <http://inmedia.
revues.org/479> (accessed on February 1, 2014).
8. Monahan, The Shock of the News, Media Coverage and the Making of
9/1, xii–xiii.
9. “Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a
substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a
hyperreality.” Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, translated by Sheila
Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994; French edi-
tion: Editions Galilee, 1984), 1.
10. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’Neil, and Jeffrey Dowd, “Introduction:
Katrina’s Imprint” in eds. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’Neil, Jeffrey Dowd, and
Roland Anglin, Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in New Orleans, 1.

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166 / Notes to Chapter 3

11. Ibid.
12. Nancy Boyd-Franklin, “Racism, Trauma, and Resilience, The Psycho-
logical Impact of Katrina” in Ibid., 89.
13. Mia Bay, “Invisible Tethers, Transportation and Discrimination in the
Age of Katrina” in Ibid., 24.
14. James Jennings and Louis Jushnick, “Poverty as Race, Power and Wealth”
in eds. Louis Jushnick and James Jennings, A New Introduction to Poverty: The
Role of Race, Power, and Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 6.
15. Mary Pattillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the
Black Middle Class (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 2. The author
notes: “Welfare debates, discussions of crime and safety, urban policy initiatives,
and even the cultural uproar over things like rap music are focused in the situ-
ation of poor African Americans. [. . .] But rarely do we hear the stories of the
other three-fourths, of the majority of African Americans, who may be the office
secretary, the company’s computer technician, a project manager down the hall,
or the person who teaches our children.” Ibid., 2.
16. Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge, 366.
17. The footage is online: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v9ZVD9jjpI>
(accessed January 13, 2011).
18. “Whether on radio, television, or in the papers, journalists were sudden-
ly and surprisingly taking adversarial positions with officials, and even informing
those officials about the realities of the situation at hand. [. . .] It was a heady
moment. Everywhere one tuned, there seemed to be an impassioned journalist
expressing public outrage and seeking to hold officials accountable.” W. Lance
Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, When the Press Fails, Politi-
cal Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Chicago: The University
Press of Chicago, 2007), 65.
19. Douglas Brinkley writes: “Racism was in play, to some degree. If thou-
sands of storm-ravaged citizens were stranded in Boston’s Back Bay, caught on
some portion of the Massachusetts Turnpike during a flood and if they were
white, you can be sure it wouldn’t have taken days for them to be evacuated.
Whatever the conditions, it wouldn’t have taken officials four days to rescue
them.” Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge, 465.
20. “The voice reclaims black space. It demands public spatial arrangements
that enhance black American citizenship.” Mark Frederick Baker and Houston
A. Baker, “Uptown Where We Belong, Space, Captivity, and the Documentary
of Black Community” in eds. Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler, Struggles
for Representation, 219.
21. “In the early days after Katrina struck, media reporting and images of
anarchy served to justify the manner in which disaster response operations were
carried out. For example, within three days after Katrina made landfall, the gover-
nor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans suspended lifesaving operations
in New Orleans and ordered emergency responses to concentrate on arresting
looters and deterring crime instead.” Russel R Dynes and Havidan Rodriguez,

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 Notes to Chapter 3 / 167

“Finding and Framing Katrina: the Social Construction of Disaster” in eds. David
Brunsma, David Overfelt and Steve Picou, The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives
on a Modern Catastrophe (Lanham: MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 24.
22. Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water, Hurricane Katrina and
the Color of Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006), x–xi.
23. Richard Mizelle, Jr., contends that displacement contributed to increas-
ing New Orleanians’ traumatic loss: “In the aftermath of both the Great Missis-
sippi Flood of 1927 and Katrina, many survivors were displaced from their land
and homes and migrated to cities in the urban South and the North. Displacement
can have another meaning, though, equally linked to the idea of loss. The loss of
neighborhood familiarity, support networks, longtime health-care providers, or
something as seemingly banal as the neighborhood market where you bought
fresh fish every Friday morning all constitute displacement. [. . .] This emotional
and psychological distress, I would argue, can lead to exacerbated physical ail-
ments.” Richard Mizelle, Jr., “Second-lining the Jazz City: Jazz Funerals, Katrina,
and the Reemergence of New Orleans” in eds. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’Neil,
Jeffrey Dowd, and Roland Anglin, Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in
New Orleans, 73.
24. Geoffrey Nunberg, The Years of Talking Dangerously (New York: Public
Affairs, 2009), 194–195.
25. John Fiske, Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S. Politics, (Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 2.
26. Mike Wayne, “Documentary as critical and creative research” in eds.
Thomas Austin and Wilma de Jong, Rethinking Documentary, New Perspectives,
New Practices, (New York: Open University Press, 2010), 90. The author also
mentions Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine (2004) and Fahrenheit 9/11
(2004), which “mirror academic criticism of US television news and bring it to
the mainstream.” Ibid., 90.
27. Thomas W. Benson and Brian J. Snee, “New political documentary”
in eds. Thomas W. Benson and Brian J. Snee, The Rhetoric of the New Political
Documentary (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University, 2008), 14.
28. Nancy Boyd-Franklin, “Racism, Trauma, and Resilience, The Psycho-
logical Impact of Katrina” in eds. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’Neil, Jeffrey Dowd,
and Roland Anglin, Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in New Orleans, 81.
29. Michael Eric Dyson, Between God and Gangsta Rap: Bearing Witness to
Black Culture (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 199.
30. Myisha Priest, “Langston Hughes Writing the Body of Emmett Till” in
eds. Harriet Pollack and Christopher Mettress, Emmett Till in Literary Memory
and Imagination (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 2008), 58.
31. His words echo Frantz Fanon’s remarks on the fact of blackness: “I came
into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled
with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an
object in the mist of other object. Sealed into that crushing objecthood, I turned
beseechingly to others. Their attention was a liberation, running over my body

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suddenly abraded into nonbeing, endowing me once more with an agility that I
had thought lost, and by taking me out of the world, restoring me to it.” Frantz
Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1986), 109.
32. Bernard D. Haley, “ ‘Black on Black’ Crime: The Myth and the Reality,”
Crime and Social Justice 20 (1983), 52–53.
33. Pauline Lipman, High Stakes Education: Inequality, Globalization and
Urban School Reform (London, New York: Routledge, 2004), 169.
34. Gloria Yamato, “Something about the Subject Makes it Hard to Name”
in eds. Jo Whitehorse Cochran, Donna Langston, and Caroly Woodward, Chang-
ing Our Power: An Introduction to Women’s Studies (Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt,
1988), 3.
35. Matthew C. Whitaker, ed., African American Icons of Sport, Triumph,
Courage and Excellence (Westport, CT; London: Greenwood Press, 2008), 50.
36. Jim Brown, with Steve Delsohn, Out of Bounds (New York: Kensington
Publishing Corp., 1989).
37. The book includes a study of wrestling in the chapter entitled “In the
Ring” and of bicycle racing in “The Tour de France.” Roland Barthes, Mythologies
(Paris: Seuil, 1970).
38. Roland Barthes, What is sport? translated by Richard Howard (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 59–61. Barthes furthers “What
is sport? Sport answers this question by another: who is best? But to this question
of the ancient duels, sport gives a new meaning: for man’s excellence is sought
here only in relation to things. Who is the best man to overcome the resistance
of things, the immobility of nature?” Ibid., 63.
39. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black and Red, 1967,
1983), 18.
40. Kathryn Jay, More than Just a Game: Sports in American Life since
1940, 7.
41. Patrick B. Miller, “The Anatomy of Scientific Racism: Racialist Responses
to Black Athletic Achievement” in Journal of Sport History; 25 (Spring 1998), 125.
42. Ben Carrington, Race, Sports and Politics: the Sporting Black Diaspora,
79.
43. Brown is the topic of another written biography: Mike Freeman, Jim
Brown, The Fierce Life of an American Hero (New York, London, Toronto, Sydney:
Harper Entertainment, 2007).
44. Jim Brown quoted in Roberta J. Newman, “Jim Brown: The Rise and
Fall (and Rise) of a Cultural Icon” in eds. David C. Ogden and Joel Nathan
Rosen, From Fame to Infamy, Race, Sport and the Fall from Grace (Jackson, MS:
University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 188.
45. Pero Gaglo Dagbovie and Amaris J. White, “Jim Brown” in ed. Matthew
C. Whitaker, African American Icons of Sport, Triumph, Courage and Excellence,
50.
46. Kathryn Jay, More than Just a Game: Sports in American Life since 1940
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 3.

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 Notes to Chapter 3 / 169

47. Patrick B. Miller and David K. Wiggins, Sport and the Color Line, Black
Athletes and Race Relations in Twentieth-Century America, x.
48. Kathryn Jay, More than Just a Game: Sports in American Life since
1940, 106.
49. Kathryn Jay argues that the NFL (like other sports organizations) was
affected by a series of deregulations: “Starting with the move of the Oakland
Raiders to Los Angeles in the early 1980s, the NFL embarked on a roller-coaster
ride of teams movement. Several developments encouraged owners to consider
moving their teams to new locales. First, the coming of free agency dramatically
raised player salaries. [. . .] The NFL grew much more aggressive in licensing
and marketing its products, and all clubs agreed in 1982 to give NFL Properties
exclusive usage of all team logos and league marks. NFL Properties then sold logo
rights to companies such as Coca-Cola and Reebok for use in advertisements
[. . .]” Ibid., 208. See the chapter “Competing on the open market.” Ibid., 180–216.
50. Mike Freeman, Jim Brown, The Fierce Life of an American Hero, 124.
51. Michael Messner, “Masculinities and Athletic Careers” in eds. Margaret
L. Andersen, Patricia Hill Collins, Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, fifth
edition (New York: Wadsworth, 2004), 199. The author notes that a sports career
is no longer deemed attractive to young white men who would rather put for
their academic performance as a sign of masculine status: “The white, middle-
class institutional context, with its emphases on education and income, makes it
clear to them that choices exist and that the pursuit of an athletic career is not a
particularly good choice. Where the young male once found sports to be a con-
venient institution within which to construct masculine status, the postadolescent
and young adult man from a higher-status background simply transfers these
same strivings to other institutional contexts: education and careers.” Ibid., 195.
52. Mikel J. Koven, Blaxploitation Films, (Herts, England, Kamera Books,
2010), 13.
53. Sam Kelly, “Sidney Poitier: héros intégrationniste” in eds. Mark Reid,
Janine Euvrard, Francis Bordat, Raphaël Bassan, Le Cinéma noir américain (Con-
dé sur Noireau: Editions Corlet, Collection CinémAction, 1988), 69.
54. Donald Bogle writes: “Black audiences were consciously aware for the
first time of the great tomism inherent in the Poitier character, indeed in the
Poitier image.” Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An
Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, (New York/London: Continuum,
1973), 182.
55. Jim Brown, with Steve Delsohn, Out of Bounds, 27. Brown writes: “When
a back circled around the end, go for a little pass over the middle, defensive guys
could stick out their forearm, catch you in the neck. That could knock you out,
but it was legal. So was hitting a guy in the back of his knees when he wasn’t
looking, another sweetheart move that could end a career. The headslap couldn’t
maim you, only knock your brain out of your ear. Now outlawed, all that used
to be legal and standard [. . .].” Ibid.
56. Ibid., 11.

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57. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness, The African American Image in Film

(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 78. He adds: “Jim Brown was able
to do what Poitier was denied in his career to that point, to act in a violent
assertive manner and express his sexuality freely.” Ibid., 79.
58. See Delphine Letort, “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van
Peebles, 1971): Exégèse d’un film militant” in ed. Eliane Elmaleh, Usages et contre-
usages du stéréotype chez les Afro-américains, Revue LISA—Vol. VII—no. 1, 2009,
Presses Universitaires de Caen, 74–88. <http://lisa.revues.org/index790.html>
(accessed on March 14, 2014).
59. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness, The African American Image in Film,
79–80.
60. Huey P. Newton, “He won’t bleed me, A Revolutionary Analysis of Sweet
Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, With an Introduction by Bobby Seale, June 19, 1971”
in ed. Toni Morrison, To Die for the People, (San Francisco, CA: City Light Books,
1995; First edition: New York: Random House, 1972), 112–148.
61. Ben Carrington, Race, Sports and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora,
79.
62. Charlene Regester, “From the Gridiron and the Boxing Ring to the
Cinema Screen: The African-American Athlete in pre-1950 Cinema” in eds. J. A.
Mangan and Andrew Ritchie, Ethnicity, Sport, Identity: Struggle for Status (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2004), 278.
63. Mike Freeman, Jim Brown, The Fierce Life of an American Hero, 146–
147, 165, 204.
64. “Like those daytime melodramas, it was a multiple ‘family saga’ with
villains and victims, glacial pace, meandering twists of plot, pregnant pauses,
paucity of action, and abundance of talk, and with cuts to commercials during
recess or after dramatic pieces of testimony.” Linda Williams, Playing the Race
Card, Melodramas of Black and White From Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson (Princ-
eton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 263.
65. “The famous Time mug shot that digitally darkened his skin, froze
his movement, and wiped the confident smile off his face represented a radical
reversal of the smiling athlete who had so gracefully faked out opponents or
leaped with casual ease through airport. The demeanor of this charismatic, and
now emphatically “black,” celebrity was, finally the most compelling reason the
American jury-audience could not stop watching the Simpson trial day after long
day.” Ibid., 269.
66. Jonathan Mathew Finn, Capturing the Criminal Image: From Mug Shot
to Surveillance Society (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 1.
67. Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle, 93–125. According to Kellner, the
media spectacle around O. J. Simpson “intensified racial divisions and conflict,
and helped promote a white backlash.” Ibid., 116.
68. “No single film in the silent era is more important to the critical history
of stereotype than is D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (USA, 1915). Here,

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 Notes to Chapter 3 / 171

the late-nineteenth image of the African American male as rapist turns to pure
spectacle in the ideologically weighted aesthetics of black-and-white film. In Gus,
played in blackface by Walter Long, we have the filmic birth of what Donald
Bogle (1989) call the ‘brutal black buck,’ a sexually uncontrollable figure who lusts
after white women.” Robyn Wiegman, “Race, ethnicity, and film” in eds. John Hill
and Pamela Church Gibson, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 162.
69. See Martha Menchaca, Recovering History, Constructing Race, The Indi-
an, Black and White Roots of Mexican Americans (Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press, 2001, 2003).
70. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness, The African American Image in Film,
34.
71. Mikel J. Koven, Blaxploitation Film, 99.
72. Ibid. The author compares Slaughter to Superfly TNT (Ron O’Neal,
1973) in order to demonstrate that white Blaxploitation films differ to black Blax-
ploitation productions: “This [Superfly TNT] is one of the most intelligent, percep-
tive and political of the Blaxploitation films. Not surprising, since the screenplay is
by black activist and author Alex Haley (Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm
X). [. . .] Unlike some of the white-made Blaxploitation films discussed below,
particularly Slaughter, the torture and degradation that Priest experiences at the
hands of his white captors is not exploitative. Instead, these scenes of torture are
ideological: what these white soldiers do to Priest is what white colonial govern-
ments have long been doing to the black bodies of Africa.” Ibid., 61–62.
73. “While imprisoned, Newton became identified with the warrior hero of
the famous poster, and many Panther supporters came to believe that Newton’s
release from prison would make the real beginning of ‘the revolution.’ Newton,
however, felt conscious of the fact that he was not the heroic warrior figure, or
even the dynamic public performer, that the role required.” Judith Lowder New-
ton, From Panthers to Promise Keepers: Rethinking the Men’s Movement—New
Social Formations (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publisher, 2005), 67.
74. Rhonda Y. Williams, “Black Women, Urban Politics, and Engendering
Black Power” in ed. Peniel E. Joseph, The Black Power Movement, Rethinking the
Civil Rights—Black Power Era, (New York/London: Routledge, 2006), 90.
75. Judith Lowder Newton, From Panthers to Promises Keepers, Rethinking
the Men’s Movement, 63.
76. Newton explains: “The phrase ‘All Power to the People’ was meant to
turn this around, to convince Black People that their rewards were due in the
present, that it was in their power to create a Promised Land here and now.” Huey
P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Penguin Books, 2009; first edition:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 179.
77. Newton refers to Mao to advocate self-defense in his writings: “One suc-
cessful practitioner of the art and science of national liberation and self-defense,
Brother Mao Tse-tung, put it this way: ‘We are advocates of the abolition of war,

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172 / Notes to Chapter 3

we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order
to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.’ ” Huey P. Newton, “In
Defense of Self-Defense” June 20, 1967, in ed. Toni Morrison, To Die for the
People, The Writings of Huey P. Newton, 84.
78. Malcolm X used the phrase in a speech delivered at Audubon ballroom
on June 28, 1964. Malcolm X, “The Second Rally of the OAAU” in By Any Means
Necessary: Malcolm X (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1992), 102. Newton presents
himself as heir to Malcolm X: “But they [the black masses] learned from Malcolm
that with the gun they can recapture their dreams and make them a reality. The
heirs of Malcolm now stand millions strong on their corner of the triangle, facing
the racist dog oppressor and the soulless endorsed spokesmen.” Huey P. Newton,
“In Defense of Self-Defense” July 3, 1967, in ed. Toni Morrison, To Die for the
People, The Writings of Huey P. Newton, 88.
79. Jama Lazerow and Yohuru R. Williams, In Search of the Black Panther
Party: New Perspective on a Revolutionary Movement (Durham, NC: Duke Uni-
versity Press, 2006), 256.
80. Jane Rhodes, Framing the Black Panthers, The Spectacular Rise of a Black
Power Icon, (New York/London: The New Press, 2007).
81. Martin A. Berger, Seeing Through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights
Photography (Berkeley and Los Angeles. CA: University of Berkeley Press, 2011), 7.
82. Gladys L. Knight, Icons of the African American Protest: Trailblazing
Activists of the Civil Rights Movement, Vol. 1 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
2009), 71.
83. Sam Durant, Black Panther, The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas
(New York: Rizzoli, 2007), 28. The book includes artworks by Emory Douglas
and published in Black Panthers, illustrating the mottos and ideas of the Party.
84. Toni Morrison, To Die for the People, The Writings of Huey P. Newton.
85. Christopher P. Lehman, The Colored Cartoon, Black Representation in
American Animated Short Films 1907–1954 (Amherst, MA: University of Mas-
sachusetts Press, 2007), 10.
86. Martin A. Berger, Seeing Through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights
Photography, 68.
87. Dennis Carlson, “Troubling Heroes: Of Rosa Parks, Multicultural Edu-
cation, and Critical Pedagogy” in Greg Dimitriadis and Dennis Carlson, Prom-
ises to Keep: Cultural Studies, Democratic Education, and Public Life (New York:
Routledge, 2003), 197.
88. “Of course, King was a genuine leader with an unequalled following.
Still, his adoption by whites gave him an ambiguous status—one reason why many
white Americans wanted to have his birthday made a holiday was to ensure that
this honor would go to someone with whom they could feel comfortable. Blacks
could not object, nor was that their wish. At the same time, they sensed that he
was essentially a white choice.” Andrew Hacker, Two Nations, Black and White,
Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), 63.

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Chapter 4

1. Andrew Dewaard, “Joints and Jams: Spike Lee as Sellebrity Auteur,”

in eds. Janice D. Hamlet, Robin R. Means Coleman, Fight the Power, The Spike
Lee Reader, 359.
2. General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 on
January 16, 1865, which granted forty acres of tilled land and a mule to freed
black families. By June 1965, some forty thousand freed people had settled on
four hundred thousand acres of “Sherman land” along coastal South Carolina and
Georgia. However, President Andrew Johnson revoked the order after his election
and returned the land to its white dispossessed owners. Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie,
“Forty Acres, or, An Act of Bad Faith” in eds. Michael T. Martin and Marilyn
Yaquinto, Redress for Historical Injustices in the United States. On Reparations for
Slavery, Jim Crow and Their Legacies (Durham, NC & London: Duke University
Press, 2007), 222–237.
3. Manning Marable, The Great Wells of Democracy: the Meaning of Race
in American Life (New York: Basic Civitas Group, 2006), 230.
4. Ibid., 252.
5. Manning Marable, Living Black History: How reimagining the African-
American Past Can Remake America’s Racial Future (New York: Basic Civitas
Group, 2006), 33.
6. The full speech can be accessed online <http://www.blackpast.
org/?q=1964-malcolm-x-ballot-or-bullet> (accessed on January 26, 2014).
7. “Let us endeavour to invent a man in full, something which Europe has
been incapable of achieving.” Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, translated
by Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004; first edition: 1961), 55.
8. The full speech can be accessed online <http://www.blackpast.
org/?q=1964-malcolm-x-s-speech-founding-rally-organization-afro-american-
unity> (accessed on January 26, 2014).
9. Charles T. Banner-Haley, The Fruits of Integration: Black Middle-Class
Ideology and Culture 1960–1990 (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi,
1994), 165.
10. Less than 10 percent of whites live in poverty compared with more 27
percent of African American and 25 percent of Hispanics (Source: U.S. Depart-
ment of Health and Human Services).
11. Brian Ward, Just My Soul Reponding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Con-
sciousness and Race Relations (London: UCL Press, 1998).
12. Although Michel Chion comments on the use of music in fiction films,
I argue that Lee uses music to achieve the same effects in the documentary:
“Music can directly express its participation in the feeling of the scene, by tak-
ing on the scene’s rhythm, tone, and phrasing; obviously such music participates
in cultural codes for things like sadness, happiness, and movement. In this case
we can speak of empathetic music, from the word empathy, the ability to feel the

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feelings of others.” Michel Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound and Screen, translated by

Claudia Gorsman, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 8.
13. “It was in New Orleans, by contrast, where black people not only found
themselves able to retain a number of African cultural practices, such as drum-
ming, that were illegal elsewhere but also chose to stay, generation upon genera-
tion, in favor of going too climates that were colder (in both senses of the word).
[. . .] Insofar as French and Spanish attitudes that helped to shape New Orleans
culture were less invested in suppressing and erasing African influences, those
influences became integral to the way of life in that city. [. . .] African American
could look to New Orleans for speech patterns, cuisine, rituals, philosophies, and,
significantly, music that were as close as we might get to the unknowable African
past.” Evie Shockley, “The Haunted Houses of New Orleans: Gothic Homelessness
and African American Experience” in eds. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’Neil, Jef-
frey Dowd, and Roland Anglin, Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in New
Orleans (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 2010), 102.
14. Michael E. Crutcher, Tremé, Race and Place in a New Orleans Neighbor-
hood (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2010), 28.
15. Richard Mizelle, Jr., “Second-lining the Jazz City: Jazz Funerals, Katrina,
and the Reemergence of New Orleans” in eds. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’ Neil,
Jeffrey Dowd and Roland Anglin, Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in New
Orleans, 69. The author depicts the jazz funeral as follows: “During a jazz funeral,
a brass band traditionally awaits outside of the church or funeral home for the
services to be completed, then begins to play processional or mournful music like
‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ Before older cemetery in the city became full, the entire
procession, including the band, would proceed to the gravesite. . . . The dancers
and marchers who follow the band as the entire scene moves through the streets
of NO are called the second line. These individuals as a unique component of
this cultural performance, having at times various connections to the deceased
and to a particular community. . . . Some second-liners bring their own brass
instruments or drums and join in the band, while others elaborately decorate
umbrellas that can be seen from blocks away.” Ibid., 70.
16. Janet Walker, “Rights and return: perils and fantasies of situated tes-
timony after Katrina,” in eds. Bhaskar Sarkar and Janet Walker, Documentary
Testimonies, Global Archives of Suffering, 110.
17. Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge, 33–34. The author further writes:
“New Orleans poverty figures had to be juxtaposed against its proportion of
elderly, which was above average, and its noticeably large percentage of African
Americans. Many social historians have traced the lively cultural personality of
New Orleans and its jazz music to that disproportionately large percentage of the
city’s population, but in the face of a natural disaster, the world of the poor in
New Orleans, particularly that of the poor black, and the poor elderly, couldn’t
be romanticized in a Harry Connick Jr. croon or a Kermit Ruffins horn riff. [. . .]
Selling the world on the historic stage set that was so much of picturesque New
Orleans, the city seemed not to care about its other decaying side.” Ibid., 33.

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 Notes to Chapter 4 / 175

18. Ellen C. Scott, “Sounding Black, Cultural Identification, Sound, and the
Films of Spike Lee” in eds. Janice D. Hamlet, Robin R. Means Coleman, Fight the
Power, The Spike Lee Reader, 232.
19. Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino, The Myth of Southern Excep-
tionalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 159.
20. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QX7apebWaE> (accessed on Janu-
ary 28, 2014).
21. The full program: 1. We want freedom. We want power to determine
the destiny of our Black Community; 2. We want full employment for our people;
3. We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of our Black Commu-
nity; 4. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings; 5. We want
education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American
society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the
present-day society; 6. We want all black men to be exempt from military ser-
vice; 7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of
black people; 8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county
and city prisons and jails; 9. We want all black people when brought to trial to
be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black com-
munities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States; 10. We want land,
bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political
objective, a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black
colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for
the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.
22. “We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of the black
community.”
23. “The economic relationship of America’s black communities to the larg-
er society also reflects their colonial status. The political power exercised over
those communities goes hand in glove with the economic deprivation experienced
by the black citizens.” Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) and
Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power, The Politics of Liberation in America (New
York: Vintage Books, 1992; First edition: 1967), 16.
24. Newton recounts that he went to the penitentiary in search of “justice,”
but all he found was “just us.”
25. Newton’s puns in the play illustrate Saussure’s explanation that “meaning
exists only within a system.” Through puns and anecdotes, the actor interpreting
Newton tries to subvert the system to which words as “signifiers” refer. See the
chapter “Semiotics” in eds. Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake, Film Theory:
an Introduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 33–34.
26. Mikhail Bakhtin, translated by Caryl Emerson, Problems of Dostoevsky’s
Poetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 127. Bakhtin adds:
“Laughter embraces both poles of change, it deals with the very process of change,
with crisis itself.” Ibid.
27. Averintsev writes “Laughter is not freedom but the process of becom-
ing free” and is quoted by Gergana Vitanova, “Authoring the Self in a NonNative

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Language” in eds. Joan Kelly Hall, Gergana Vitanova, Ludmila Marchenkova,

Dialogue with Bakhtin on Second and Foreign Language Learning: New Perspectives
(Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2005), 154.
28. J. Edgar Hoover, “Memorandum to Special Agent in Charge,” Albany,
New York, August 25. 1967, in ed. William L. Van Deburg, Modern Black Nation-
alism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan (New York: New York University
Press, 1997), 134.
29. Stokely Carmichael settled in Guinea whereas Eldridge Cleaver and
his wife eventually fled to Algeria; Angela Davis followed Huey P. Newton and
Bobby Seale in prison. Ward Churchill looks back to Cointelpro’s secret war strat-
egies and analyses their disruptive effects within the Black Panther Party. Ward
Churchill, “ ‘To Disrupt, Discredit, and Destroy’: the FBI’s Secret War against the
Black Panther Party” in eds. Kathleen Cleaver and Georges Katsiaficas, Liberation,
Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: a New Look at the Panthers and their
Legacy (New York: Routledge, 2001), 78–117.
30. Newton wrote: “Black people must move, from the grassroots up through
the perfumed circles of the Black bourgeoisie, to seize by any means necessary a
proportionate share of the power vested and collected in the structure of America.
We must organize and unite to combat by long resistance the brutal force used
against us daily.” Huey P. Newton, “In Defense of Self-Defense” June 20, 1967,
in ed. Toni Morrison, To Die for the People, The Writings of Huey P. Newton, 84.
31. Maulana Karenga developed another nationalist group (US Organiza-
tion) in Los Angeles at the same time as the Panthers. Karenga put the emphasis
on the African cultural heritage to achieve cultural liberation. Scot Brown, Figth-
ing for US: Maulana Karenga, The US Organization, and Black Cultural National-
ism (New York: New York University Press, 2005).
32. Huey P. Newton, “To the Black Movement” May 15, 1968, in ed. Toni
Morrison, To Die for the People, The Writings of Huey P. Newton, 90.
33. “The cultural nationalists are concerned with returning to the old Afri-
can culture and thereby regaining their identity and freedom. In other words,
they feel that the African culture will automatically bring political freedom. Many
times cultural nationalists fall into line as reactionary nationalists.” Ibid., 90.
34. Ronald D Smith, Strategic Planning for Public Relations, fourth edition
(New York: Routledge, 2013), 294.
35. Melissa T. Brown, Enlisting Masculinity. The Construction of Gender in
US Military Recruiting (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 94.
36. <http://www.spikeddb.com/work/mlk/> (accessed on January 26, 2014).
37. Clayborne Carson, “Martin Luther King, Jr: Charismatic Leadership
in a Mass Struggle,” Journal of American History 74, September 1987, 448–454.
38. <http://www.spikeddb.com/work/jaguar-2/> (accessed on January 27,
2014).
39. Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color
Line (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 203.

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 Notes to Chapter 4 / 177

40. “Beauty and strength are, after all, understood by Riefensthal as exclu-
sively natural attributes rather than cultural achievement.” Ibid., 174.
41. Spike Lee quoted by Yvette Caslin. <http://rollingout.com/business/
executive-suite/spike-lee-joins-chevrolets-table-of-brotherhood-tour-challenges-
blacks-to-get-education/> (accessed on January 26, 2014).
42. He explains: “I refer to charter schools as freedom schools—the freedom
to have a longer year, a longer day; the freedom to make hiring decisions based
on qualification; the freedom of parents to pick their school. All of our schools
are open-enrolment schools. If you have superior curriculum and instructional
models, if you are able to recruit the best and the brightest and half the teachers
in this district—charter and noncharter combined—are in their 20s, they’re from
many of the elite universities, they bring great content mastery, energy; they thing
a 180-day school year is a part-time job [. . .]. That’s the reason you’ve been able
to lengthen our school year to eleven months and our school day to 8.5 hours.
I’ve always been a strong advocate of a longer school year and a longer school
day.” Paul Vallas [IGIW, Part 2, 10:42]
43. There was an unprecedented explosive growth of charter schools in
New Orleans (70 percent are now chartered), which makes it a unique experi-
ment all over the country. Charter schools were devised as an alternative to the
public school system which was dogged by financial mismanagement, corrup-
tion, high drop-out numbers, and poor student results. Although the state retains
the power to renew or not the charters of the schools, depending on whether
they success or fail to achieve the expected results, privately operated charters
eliminate public participation in the governance of the schools. While they are
still financed by tax money, they are also entitled to raise funds and to resort to
private investments. See Adrienne Dixson, “Whose Choice? A Critical Perspective
on Charter Schools” in Cedric Johnson, The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina,
Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans, (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2011), 130.
44. She contends that the teachers’ ideological dispositions: “(a) influence
how they defined and label students and (b) affect their pedagogical choices.”
Pauline Lipman, Race, Class, and Power in School Restructuring (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1998), 26. She furthers explains: “The values,
behaviors, language, and knowledge of white, middle-class students is often the
standards in schools, and those whose identities do not reflect this standard are
marginalized and/or pressured to change and conform. [. . .] Student resistance
to the marginalization of their identity may lead to affirmation and strength,
but it may also result in denial of educational opportunities, for example, when
schooling is constructed in such a way that African American students define
academic success as “acting white.” McDermott (1974) argues that school failure
for some students of color becomes something to be “achieved,” a way to protect
their personal integrity and dignity in the face of degrading policies, practices,
and beliefs of educators.” Ibid., 28.

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45. Not only did Spike Lee endorse the Jordan Spiz’ikes, but he also
designed the G-Shock watches for Casio. <http://www.javys.com/casio/series.
php?series_id=GT0013> (accessed on January 26, 2014).
46. Charles Banner-Haley, The Fruits of Integration: Black Middle-Class Ide-
ology and Culture 1960–1990, 170.
47. Note the company’s website address: <http://www.spikeddb.com>. Spike
Lee states his goals as following: “Our mission is to create positive, thought-
provoking work that entertains and helps boost our client’s bottom line. But we’ve
also made it our business to help marketers stay on top of the cultural shifts in
America that other guys ignore until it’s too late. For over 15 years, we’ve done
so for clients like Pepsi, Jaguar, State Farm, HBO, TNT, Mountain Dew, Johnson
& Johnson and Chevrolet.” See <http://www.spikeddb.com/about-us/> (accessed
on March 22, 2014).
48. Brian Wilson and Robert Sparks, “Michael Jordan, Sneaker Commer-
cials and Canadian Youth Culture” in ed. David L. Andrews, Michael Jordan
Inc., Corporate Sport, Media Culture, and Late Modern America (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2001), 218.
49. Todd Boyd, “The Day the Niggaz Took Over: Basketball, Commod-
ity Culture and Black Masculinity” in eds. Aaron Baker and Todd Boyd, Out
of Bounds: Sports, Media, and the Politics of Identity (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1997), 138.
50. Ben Carrington, Race, Sports and Politics: the Sporting Black Diaspora,
105.
51. Ed., Matthew C. Whitaker, African American Icons of Sport, Triumph,
Courage and Excellence (Westport, CT; London: Greenwood Press, 2008).
52. Matthew C. Whitaker mentions the “furor that greeted Ali’s decision
[. . .]. Ali received constant death threats and was menaced by cruel phone calls
at home. [. . .] When Ali refused to serve, he was stripped of his title, sentenced
to prison, and fined $10,000.” Matthew C. Whitaker, “Muhammad Ali,” Ibid., 5.
53. Megan Falater, “Tommie Smith and John Carlos,” Ibid., 251.
54. Shaun Powell, Souled Out?: How Blacks are Winning and Losing in Sports
(Champaign IL: Human Kinetics, 2008), 28–30. The author explains: “The pos-
sibility of backlash is what frightens those black athletes who do have a social
pulse. [. . .] Although it’s true that the activist pioneers who risked their public
image did pay a price for doing so, history ultimately pardoned them and repaid
them handsomely.” Ibid., 30.
55. Douglas Kellner, “The Sports Spectacle, Michael Jordan, and Nike,” 313.
The author draws on Michael Jordan to hammer home his point: “As a polyse-
mic signifier, Jordan thus presents a figure that mobilizes many fantasies (i.e.,
athletic greatness, wealth, success, and upward mobility) for the national and
global imaginary, providing a spectacle that embodies many desirable national
and global features and aspirations. Yet Jordan is extremely black and his race
is a definite signifier of his spectacle, though his blackness too has conflicting
connotations. [. . .] Jordan’s blackness is overdetermined and has also served to

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 Notes to Chapter 4 / 179

signify black transgressions, as when his gambling behavior became a subject

of negative media presentation and his father’s murder led to speculation on
connections with organized crime. In these images, Jordan is presented as the
threatening black figure, as the negative fantasy figure of black deviance from
white norms.” Ibid., 311.
56. The story appears both in the film and in his autobiography. Jim Brown,
with Steve Delsohn, Out of Bounds, 53–54.
57. Brown explains: “St. Simons is a very unique place because even though
we talk about slavery and we talk about racism, I’ve never really felt racism. [. . .]
Segregation gave us an ability to deal with ourselves. So I was always very secure
in the community and family and belonging. [. . .] As I learned about my spirit
and my attitude, I think a lot of it comes from being here, from being black,
being with a black family, a black community, and understanding that the Ebos
came here and refused to become slaves” [06:52 to 08:32].
58. “Sadly, a lot of the history and culture is getting bulldozed, literally.
White developers and land prospectors now outnumber black natives. Many of
the blacks are selling their lands to the whites. My mom still lives on St. Simons
and we’re holding onto our land. I’m afraid we’re in the minority.” Jim Brown,
with Steve Delsohn, Out of Bounds, 53.
59. Kathryn Jay, More than Just a Game: Sports in American Life since
1940, 114–115.
60. Mike Freeman, Jim Brown, The Fierce Life of an American Hero, 170.
61. Eds., Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins, Race, Class, and
Gender: An Anthology, 77.
62. Kathryn Jay, More than Just a Game: Sports in American Life since
1940, 23.
63. Thomas McLaughlin, Give and Go, Basketball as a Cultural Practice
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), 209. The author comments
on the opening sequence of Lee’s film to hammer home his point: “It moves from
the rural to the urban, from the all-American players bathed in sunlight to the
ghetto courts of the city, from white to black. Lee wants simultaneously to claim
basketball as the American game and to claim it as the black game, played by
men and women in desperate racist circumstances, in a corrupt and dangerous
world. The sequence expresses a utopian desire and a harsh realism—in fact, it
ends with a black man shooting a ball in a maximum-security prison.” Ibid., 198.
64. Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins, eds., Race, Class, and
Gender: An Anthology, 77.
65. Spike Lee notes: “Nowadays guys make a lot of money and there’s very
few players out there whose fans really believe they want to win anymore. Michael
Jordan wants to, whether it’s Ping-Pong, bid whist, pitching pennies or whatever.
But I bring up the question to a lot of athletes today, black and white, whether
they have the will to win. Everybody wants to win on Saturday afternoon or
Sunday afternoon when the game begins and the cheerleaders are out there and
everybody tunes in. But the games are won in the preparation—are they willing

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to do what it takes to win before the game ever starts? Seems like some of them
just are making so much money that they don’t care.” Spike Lee and Ralph Wiley,
The Best Seat in the House: A Basketball Memoir, 273.
66. Ibid., 246. He writes: “Division One college basketball players should
be paid. Stipend. Trust fund. Work-study. Whatever you want to call it. No doubt
in my mind they should be salaried. They are not stupIbid. They are not blind
to the big picture. They see everybody is salaried, from the coach to the school
to the conference and its employees, to the concierge and the desk help in the
hotels, to the airline pilot, to the commentators in network blazers, to TV produc-
ers and technicians, to sneaker manufacturers, to the sneaker reps—everybody
under the sun making a good living off the annual contesting of these college
games.” Ibid., 245.
67. Jeffrey Lane, “Mortgaging Michael Jordan’s Reputation” in eds. David
C. Ogden and Joel Nathan Rosen, From Fame to Infamy, Race, Sport and the Fall
from Grace, 128.
68. Mary G. McDonald, “Michael Jordan” in ed. Matthew C. Whitaker,
African American Icons of Sport, Triumph, Courage and Excellence, 150.
69. Kamal Dean Parhizgar and Robert Parhizgar, Multiculturall Business
Ethics and Global Managerial Moral Reasoning (Lanham, MD: University Press
of America, 2006), 462.
70. <http://watch.nba.com/nba/video/channels/tnt_overtime/2012/11/
26/20121126-knicks-nets-spike-tease-tnt.nba> (accessed on January 24, 2014).
71. http://www.highsnobiety.com/2012/12/24/video-royalty-is-big-nba-
commercial-directed-by-and-featuring-spike-lee/> (accessed on January 24, 2014).
72. <http://www.highsnobiety.com/2012/03/21/video-the-chance-nike-
sportswear-share-your-story-featuring-spike-lee/> (accessed on January 24, 2014).
73. Kathryn Jay, More than Just a Game: Sports in American Life since
1940, 4.
74. He declared: “Hoop Dreams is the best basketball film I’ve seen. Even
though it was a documentary, it had a great dramatic arc, a fine narrative twist,
and was so real. Just goes to show, you can make it up, but you can’t make it up
as well as life.” <http://espn.go.com/page2/s/questions/spikelee.html> (accessed on
January 24, 2014).
75. Andrew Dewaard states: “The check from Nike CEO Phil Knight that
bailed Lee out when Jim Brown: All American went over budget is certainly less
publicized.” Andrew Dewaard, “Joints and Jams: Spike Lee as Sellebrity Auteur,”
in eds. Janice D. Hamlet, Robin R. Means Coleman, Fight the Power, The Spike
Lee Reader, 351.
76. Evie Shockley, “The Haunted Houses of New Orleans: Gothic Homeless-
ness and African American Experience” in eds. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’Neil,
Jeffrey Dowd, and Roland Anglin, Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in
New Orleans, 95.
77. Shawn Escoffery explains from a studio that New Orleans will never
be the same, especially the Lower Ninth Ward: “There is not a lot of means to
rebuild in parts of the Ninth Ward considering the majority of the population

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there was extremely poor. Some people sold their home to the Road Home, got a
fraction of what it would cost to actually build a new home and they can’t come
back. Then you have new houses being built up all the time. You have the Make
It Right Brad Pitt houses, the Lower Nine Nena and other groups that are working
to rebuild the Ninth Ward but the task at hand is daunting” [IGIW, Part 1, 47:00].
78. Quoted in Adelaide H. Villemoare and Peter G. Stillman, “Civic Culture
and the Politics of Planning for Neighborhoods and Housing in Post-Katrina,”
in ed. M. B. Hacker, Culture after Hurricanes, Rhetoric and Reinvention on the
Gulf Coast (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississsippi, 2010), 28. The authors
interpret the mayor’s declaration: “In effect, the mayor as authority figure was
saying both that people could come back (and even had a right to do so) and
that it would be better if they did not (and that the city would not be investing
in them, providing services for them, or reintegrating their neighborhoods into
the city as a whole.” Ibid.
79. Ibid., 20. Joseph Canizaro made a public statement to define the
commission’s goals: “New Orleans will be a sustainable, environmentally safe,
socially equitable community with a vibrant economy. Its neighborhoods will be
planned with its citizens, and connected to jobs and the region. Each will preserve
and celebrate its heritage of culture, landscape and architecture.” Urban Plan-
ning Committee: Action Plan for New Orleans Executive Summary, January 30,
2006. <http://www.nolaplans.com/plans/BNOB/Land%20Use%20Committee%20
Attachment%20A.pdf> (accessed on January 26, 2014).
80. Peirce F. Lewis notes that the Superdome has been a bone of conten-
tion from the moment it was conceived: “Never mind if skeptics sneered that the
Superdome would be filled only half a dozen times a year, and then its departing
crows would create Texas-sized traffic jams. Never mind that its legislative founda-
tion was slippery, and the cost of retiring bonds might hang like an incubus on
New Orleans’ financial back for generations to come. [. . .] If Houston had its
Astrodome, New Orleans would have its Superdome, bigger and perhaps better.”
Peirce F. Lewis, New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape, (Santa Fe, NM,
and Staunutn, VA: The Center for American Places, 2003), 94.
81. Robert Baade and Victor Matheson, “NFL Governance and the Fate
of the New Orleans Saints: Some Observations” in eds. Plácido Rodríguez, Ste-
fan Késenne, Jaume García, Governance and Competition in Professional Sports
Leagues (Oviedo: Ediciones de la Universidad de Oviedo, 2007), 142. The authors
explain that the NFL confronted the Saints’ owner Tom Benson on the issue, but
managed to garner positive publicity by making him stay while he was interested
in a better deal than New Orleans could offer.
82. Kathryn Jay, More than Just a Game: Sports in American Life since
1940, 208–210. The author gives several examples of relocations that devastated
the residents of the cities the football teams originated from. She mentions the
Cleveland Browns, who were moved to Baltimore in 1996 and were renamed the
Ravens after the team owner Art Modell agreed to provide Baltimore fans with an
NFL team, receiving in return all the publicly financed stadium’s revenues. Ibid.,
212.

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182 / Notes to Chapter 4

83. Jeff Duncan quoted in Robert Baade and Victor Matheson, “NFL Gov-
ernance and the Fate of the New Orleans Saints: Some Observations,” 162.
84. Brad R. Humphreys, Dennis Ramsay Howard, The Business of Sports:
Perspectives on the Sports Industry (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group,
2008), 85.
85. Peirce F. Lewis, New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape, 36.
Professor Peirce F. Lewis considered the construction of the superdome epito-
mized a mentality change: “It [the Superdome] is a symbol of fundamental change
in New Orleans psychology from the old days when the city was run by a handful
of old-timers [. . .]. The old, closed, conservative city was open fir business, and
open with a vengeance, all with a very strong flavor of Texas and Hollywood.
Blue bloods watched in horror, as a new Mardi Gras krewe called “Bacchus” was
organized—its membership publicly bourgeois. Bacchus’ fourth king, for example,
was not an old-time Bourbon, but comedian Bob Hope, specially imported from
Hollywood to play the role. In olden days, Hope might have been challenged to
a duel under the oaks at dawn. In the early 1970s, a millions Orleanians and
tourists cheered him down Canal Street [. . .].” Ibid., 94–95.
86. Mary Lou Widmer explains that New Orleans changed in the 1960s:
“With the movement of the population into the suburb, city officials began to
think of reconstructing the Central Business District in order to draw big business
back to the heart of the city. Poydras Street, with its many small businesses and
deteriorating buildings, seemed the ideal place to make this transformation.” The
International Trade Mart (1965), the Convention Center (1968) and the Super-
dome (1975) are located at the end of Poydras Street. Mary Lou Widmer, New
Orleans in the Sixties (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 2000), 57.
87. “It was the new breed of businessmen—Lester Kabacoff, David Dixon,
Joseph Canizaro, Pip Brennan, Clancy Dupee, Blaine Kern, and others, who
eclipsed the old elite and, in concert with city hall, charted a tourism-dominated
course in the city.” Jonathan Mark Souther, New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and
the Transformation of the Crescent City, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 2006), 164.
88. Bill Nichols states: “Recording instruments (cameras and sound record-
ers) register the imprints of things (sights and sounds) with great fidelity. It gives
these imprints value as documents in the same way as fingerprints have value as
documents. This uncanny sense of a document, or image that bears a strict corre-
spondence to what it refers to, is called its indexical quality. The indexical quality
of an image refers to the way in wich its appearance is shaped or determined by
what it records.” Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 34.
89. Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow, “Introduction” in eds. Adam
Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow, Semiotic Landscape, Language, Image, Space (Lon-
don & New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010), 31.
90. Julia Hell and Andreas Schönle, “Introduction” in eds. Julia Hell and
Andreas Schönle, Ruins of Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2010), 7.

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 Notes to Chapter 4 / 183

91. Laurence J. Vale, “Restoring Urban Viability” in eds. Eugenie Ladner

Birch, Susan M. Wachter, Rebuilding Urban Places after Disaster: Lessons from
Hurricane Katrina (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 156.
92. The author writes: “The broken levees act as physical evidence of this
tragedy while the Lower Ninth Ward itself is framed as ‘the place to see’ in terms
of disaster, destruction and also, now, reconstruction. In addition, these sights/
sites undergo a process of sacralization through the repetitive play of images and
stories in the mass media and internet.” Kevin Dowler, “X Marks the Spot: New
Orleans under Erasure” in ed. Tristanne Connolly, Spectacular Death: Interdisci-
plinary Perspectives on Mortality and (Un)representability (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 2011), 184.
93. Evie Shockley, “The Haunted Houses of New Orleans: Gothic Homeless-
ness and African American Experience” in eds. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’Neil,
Jeffrey Dowd, and Roland Anglin, Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in
New Orleans, 106.
94. Anna Hartnell, “When the Levees Broke: Inconvenient Truths and the
Limits of National Identity,” African American Review, 45.2 (2012).
95. Evie Shockley, “The Haunted Houses of New Orleans: Gothic Homeless-
ness and African American Experience” in eds. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’Neil,
Jeffrey Dowd, and Roland Anglin, Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in
New Orleans, 108.
96. Hazel Denhart, “Deconstructing Disaster: Psycho-social Impact of
Deconstruction in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” Cities 26, issue 4, August 2009, 196.
97. “Rents increased in the city due to the limited supply of undamaged
rental housing, which was made worse by the fact that owners of rental property
benefitted from a very small percentage of the recovery grants allocated by HUD’s
Community Development Block Grant (CDBG).” Matthew J. Scire, Disaster Hous-
ing: FEMA Needs More Detailed Guidance and Performance Measures, Report
to Congressional Requesters, United States Government Accountability Office,
August 28, 2009, 11–14. (The full report can be accessed on Google Books.)
98. “The city initially deemed homeowners to have been put on notice of
the demolition by the red stickers it placed on the doomed houses, despite the
fact that large numbers of the residents remained in postevacuation exile all
over the country. Further, as residents began to challenge the plan, they discov-
ered that houses that had not suffered structural damage—completely recoverable
buildings—were among those that had been selected for bulldozing.” Evie Shock-
ley, “The Haunted Houses of New Orleans: Gothic Homelessness and African
American Experience” in eds. Keith Wailoo, Kareen M. O’Neil, Jeffrey Dowd,
and Roland Anglin, Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in New Orleans, 109.
99. “New Orleans was among the first American cities to build large-scale
public housing for low-income people. The first major “project” was the Iber-
ville complex, completed in 1941, just lakeside of the French Quarter [. . .]. It
was classic New Deal “slum clearance” where undesirable neighborhoods were
demolished and replaced by building where people in need could find orderly,

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184 / Notes to Chapter 4

sanitary, and agreeable places to live. In many instance it was assumed that public
housing would serve an urgent but temporary need [. . .]. Meantime, there was
Iberville: about 850 units, in well-built brick units, three stories high, with spa-
cious, grassy courtyards shaded by spreading oaks. It was an uncrowded, highly
domestic atmosphere, and a very pleasant one.” Peirce F. Lewis, New Orleans—The
Making of an Urban Landscape, 113.
100. Peirce F. Lewis explains that New Orleans’ suburban population
exploded “into the swamps” in the late 1950s. “Jefferson officials, who suddenly
found taxes deliciously rising, promptly dubbed the parish “Progressive Jefferson”
and began to build new levees and streets as revenues accumulated. [. . .] The
area’s high average income did not result from any large influx of the very rich.
Rather it was a combination of middle and upper middle income migration of
whites, together with the fact that poor people and black people were discouraged
from moving to Jefferson by economic and other constraints.” Ibid., 76.
101. Ibid., 77.
102. “These demolitions happened without prior notice to the building
owner (Nossiter, 2006) and even inadvertently included the demolition of houses
undergoing renovation (Denhart, 2006). This left many homeowners, especially
impoverished ones whose sum wealth resided in the broken structure, living in
a state of anxiety wondering if their home might be next.” Ibid., 195.
103. In January 2014, 100 houses were about to be finished. The progress
made can be checked on: <http://www.makeitrightnola.org> (accessed on Janu-
ary 28, 2014).
104. Quoted in Adelaide H. Villemoare and Peter G. Stillman, “Civic
Culture and the Politics of Planning for Neighborhoods and Housing in Post-
Katrina,” in ed. M. B. Hackler, Culture after Hurricanes, Rhetoric and Reinvention
on the Gulf Coast, 26.
105. Hazel Denhart evokes another program which promotes “deconstruc-
tion” as an alternative to demolition. He presents Mercy Corps as a nonprofit,
humanitarian relief and development agency that has allowed low-income owners
to retake control of their property. His study attempts to demonstrate that the
deconstruction process has a positive psychological impact insofar as it empow-
ers the owners who discover the value out of the ruin, for example materials
that can be reused, and are encouraged to move toward green practices. Hazel
Denhart, “Deconstructing Disaster: Psycho-social Impact of Deconstruction in
Post-Katrina New Orleans,” Cities 26, issue 4, August 2009, 195–201.
106. See chapter 2 “Why Are Ethical Issues Central to Documentary Film-
making?” in Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 42–66.
107. <http://www.documentary.org/content/what-do-about-documentary-
distortion-toward-code-ethics-0> (accessed on January 20, 2014).
108. Eric Barsam, Non-Fiction Film, A Critical History (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1973, 1992), 305.
109. “To me, it’s to find out some important aspect of our society by watch-
ing our society, by watching how things really happen as opposed to the social

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 Notes to Chapter 4 / 185

image that people hold about the way things are supposed to happen.” Richard
Leacock quoted in Calvin Pryluck, “Ultimately We Are All Outsiders: the Ethics
of Documentary Filmmaking” in eds. Alan Rosenthal and John Corner, New
Challenges for Documentary, Second Edition (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2005; first edition: 1988), 194.
110. Michael Renov “New Subjectivities: Documentary and Self-Representa-
tion in the Post-Vérité Age” in eds. Diane Waldman and Janet Walker, Feminism
and Documentary, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 88.
111. Documentary theorist Garnet C. Butchart argues that the notion of
documentary ethics revolves around three issues: “From the point of view of these
three central and related problems—participant consent, the right to know, and
the claims of objectivity—debates about ethics in documentary may be under-
stood to have taken shape around a point of incommensurability vis-a-vis the
question of individual rights.” Garnet C. Butchart, “On Ethics and Documentary:
A Real and Actual Truth” in Communication Theory 16 (2006), 428.
112. <http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/23/entertainment/la-et-
spike-20100823> (accessed on April 21, 2014).
113. “Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films are at the forefront of the
fight to create a just America, and we want you to join us. Using new media and
internet video campaigns, Brave New Films has created a quick-strike capability
that informs the public, challenges corporate media with the truth, and motivates
people to take action on social issues nationwide. We are an organization that
can produce a hard-hitting three-minute video in less than 24 hours that exposes
John McCain’s double talk, for instance, and receive 9 million views around the
world.” <http://bravenewfilms.org/> (accessed on March 16, 2011).
114. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 307.
115. Cedric Johnson, “Introduction: The Neoliberal Deluge,” The Neoliberal
Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans,
xviii.
116. Ibid., viii.
117. “Although the president’s early public statements gave the impression
that he would hold BP accountable for the clean-up by working within the estab-
lished letter of the 1990 Oil Pollution Act, which was passed in the wake of the
Exxon Waldez spill, such reassurances rang hollow with many Americans who
could not comprehend why neither the White House not BP executives seemed
capable of resolving this summer-long crisis. To make matters worse, reports
from Obama’s own national commission charged that during the critical early
weeks, his administration mislead the public about the full scale of the spill.
Moreover, Obama’s commitment to the 1990 act was itself deeply problematic
because the law afforded considerable autonomy to BP and reflected the spirit of
individual self-regulation central to neoliberal model.” Cedric Johnson, “Preface,”
The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of
New Orleans, viii. The author further argues that the media distorted the situation

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186 / Notes to Chapter 4

by highlighting the chaotic chain of events instead of pointing the governance

responsibilities: “Disaster planning and evacuation failure at the local, state and
national levels reflected a consensus around neoliberal governance. This politi-
cal reality was lost amid corporate news coverage that portrayed these events as
either a string of chaotic, unfortunate missteps, the outcome of partisan gridlock,
or simply the result of bureaucratic ineptitude.” Ibid., xix.
118. “A state-funded and state-managed public works project along the lines
of the Depression era Works Progress Administration might have temporarily
provided thousands of jobs to displaced residents and helped the city to retain
its population and recover at a much faster rate. Instead of the mass public sector
layoffs enacted by Mayor C. Ray Nagin, teachers and employees might have been
trained and deployed alongside day laborers and dockworkers in debris removal
and clean-up.” Ibid., xi.
119. Lisa Margonelli, Oil on the Brain, Adventures from the Pump to the
Pipeline (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2007).
120. Michael B. McElroy argues that the oil shocks of the 1970s produced
a decrease in demand. However, “the mood of the American consumer changed
in the 1990s as quickly as it did in the 1980s. The oil crisis was over. The price
of gasoline declined and Americans resumed their love affair with large cars.
To an increasing extent, light trucks and SUVs emerged as the motor vehicles
of choice for American consumers and, as indicated at the outset, fleet average
fuel economies dropped accordingly.” Michael B. McElroy, Energy, Perspectives,
Problems, and Prospects (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 289.
121. Robert A. G. Monks and Nell Minow, Corporate Governance (Chich-
ester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), 354.
122. Stanley Reed & Alison Fitzgerald, In Too Deep, BP and the Drilling
Race that Took it Down (New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2011), xii.
123. “Maintaining high-quality, well-run, and safe industrial operations is
as much a matter of corporate culture and incentives as it is about money. BP’s
culture encouraged individuals to take responsibility for their own operations
rather than dictating behaviors from the top. It also incentivized things that could
be measured. Worker productivity was measured in terms of financial return and
safety in terms of incidents. That led them to push people to do more with less,
while believing they were safe because they had few-on-the job injuries [. . .].”
Ibid., 124.
124. Ibid., xxi.
125. Serge Halimi, “Des patriotes américains contre Wal-Mart,” Le Monde
diplomatique (février 2006). See: <http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2006/02/
HALIMI/13182> (accessed on March 18, 2014).
126. The film’s themes are also developed through an internet multiplat-
form project: <http://www.landofopportunitymovie.com/> (accessed on February
9, 2014).
127. URL: <http://www.landofopportunitymovie.com/>. A new interac-
tive website was launched after this essay was written, further testifying to the

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 Notes to Conclusion / 187

innovative tools developed to further the viewing of film. It includes three vid-
eos that evoke the landscape of the new New Orleans through the portrayals of
three residents. <http://landofopportunityinteractive.com>, (accessed on January
12, 2014).
128. <http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/spike-lee-amazing-
rant-against-gentrification.html> (accessed on August 25, 2014)

Conclusion

1. Audrey Thomas McCluskey, “Preface” in eds. Janice D. Hamlet and

Robin R. Means Coleman, Fight the Power, The Spike Lee Reader, xi.
2. Dewaard explains that artists use their celebrity as a brand to promote
their works and dubs them “sellebrities.” Andrew Dewaard, “Joints and Jams:
Spike Lee as Sellebrity Auteur” in Ibid., 347. See also Yannick Rice Lamb, “Spike
Lee as entrepreneur: Leveraging 40 Acres and a Mule” in Ibid., 384.
3. See the whole dossier dedicated to this issue in Transatlantica and
its introduction by John Dean, “The Businessman as Artist: The Subject Itself,”
Transatlantica 2, 2010. <http://transatlantica.revues.org/5174> (accessed on Feb-
ruary 22, 2014).
4. Andrew Dewaard, “Joints and Jams: Spike Lee as Sellebrity Auteur,”
in eds. Janice D. Hamlet, Robin R. Means Coleman, Fight the Power, The Spike
Lee Reader, 351.
5. “Lee’s own increased economic power has been due in large part to
his skill in branding the Spike Lee name, resulting in his transformation into
a valuable commodity. From his ability to create controversy incessantly to his
numerous and various commercial enterprises, Lee has exploited his celebrity in
order to continue his prolific cinematic output over the years.” Andrew Dewaard,
“Joints and Jams: Spike Lee as Sellebrity Auteur,” in eds. Janice D. Hamlet and
Robin R. Means Coleman, Fight the Power, The Spike Lee Reader, 346.
6. Violaine Roussel, Voicing Dissent and the War on Iraq (New York/Lon-
don: Routledge, 2010), 22.
7. Ibid.
8. Krin Gabbard, Jamming at the Margins (Chicago/London: University
of Chicago Press, 1996), 155.
9. “What defines his activism is a strong dedication to discursive condem-
nations of what he sees as malpractices in American foreign and domestic policy,
which he combines with practical action in places like New Orleans, Haiti and
elsewhere. More recently, [. . .] he has become involved in the build-up of the
Haitian nation through financial donations as well as voluntary aid work, includ-
ing digging trenches, delivering food and medicine to the needy, and going on
fundraising trips to Washington and the United Nations.” Lisa Tsaliki, Christos
A. Frangonikolopoulos, and Asteris Huliaras, Transnational Celebrity Activism in
Global Politics Changing the World? (Chicago, Bristol: Intellect Ltd., 2011), 75.

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188 / Notes to Conclusion

10. Variety labelled Michael Moore an “agent provocateur” and his films
“polemics as performance art.” Kendall R. Phillips, Controversial Cinema: the Films
that Outraged America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008), 153.
11. Wahneema Lubiano, “But Compared to What? Reading, Realism, Rep-
resentation, and Essentialism in School Daze, Do the Right Thing, and the Spike
Lee Discourse” in ed. Valerie Smith, Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and
Video (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Depth of Field, 1997, 2003), 103.
12. George Nelson, Buppies, B-Boys, Baps and Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul
Black Culture (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992, 1994), 111. The author refers
to She’s Gotta Have it (1986) which was distributed by Island Pictures.
13. Jack Rothman, Hollywood in Wide Angle: How Directors View Filmmak-
ing (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004), 99.
14. Julie Dash testifies to the pressures she ran up against as network execu-
tives demanded she rearrange the story of Rosa Parks in her television-made film
The Rosa Parks Story (2001). See Delphine Letort, “The Rosa Parks Story: The
Making of a Civil Rights Icon.” Black Camera 3, no. 2 (2012): 31–50. <http://
muse.jhu.edu/> (accessed on May 7, 2012).
15. “In his continuing shift from ‘guerrilla’ to studio financing, bigger pro-
duction revenues, and broader-based consumer markets, Lee must confront his
most elusive and dangerous demon. Put simply, the real adversary of Lee’s creativ-
ity and eroding guerrilla stance arises out of the subtle, co-opting currents and
crossover pressures of the studio system.” Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness, The
African American Image in Film, 147.

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McDonald, Mary G. “Michael Jordan,” 145–155.
Whitaker, Matthew C. “Muhammad Ali,” 1–12.
Widmer, Mary Lou. 2000. New Orleans in the Sixties. Gretna, LA: Pelican
Publishing Company, Inc.
Williams, Linda. 2002. Playing the Race Card, Melodramas of Black and White
from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Williams, Linda. “Mirrors without memories: truth, history and the new docu-
mentary,” Film Quarterly, 46 (3; Spring), 1993, 9–21.
Wood, Joe (ed.). 1992. Malcolm X: In Our Own Image. New York: St. Martin’s
Press.
Young, James Edwards. 1988. Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and
the Consequences of Interpretation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press.

Online Interactive Sites

PBS website on A Huey P. Newton Story: <http://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/>

Spike DDB: <http://www.spikeddb.com/about-us/>
The Make It Right Foundation: <http://www.makeitrightnola.org>
Brave New Films: <http://bravenewfilms.org/>
Land of Opportunity: <http://www.landofopportunitymovie.com/>

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 Index

40 Acres and a Mule, 115, 103, 104 Armstrong, Louis, 107

149, 154 authenticity, 3, 9, 10, 22, 64

A Huey P. Newton Story, xiii, 3, Bad 25, 3, 4, 21, 30, 32, 110, 149
12–15, 28, 65, 96, 98, 102, 111–116 Baez, Joan, 12, 13
A Hundred Rifles, 94 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 113
Acham, Christine, 59 Bamboozled, 1
advertising, 8, 89, 103, 115, 116, 118, Banner-Haley, Charles T., 105, 119
119, 124, 126, 149, 150, 151, 152, Barry, John M., 53, 54, 163n38,
169n49 163n42
aesthetic strategies in Lee’s documen- Barthes, Roland, 44, 45, 84, 85
taries: 4, 30, 31, 103, 128, 141, 149, basketball, xi, 1, 2, 27, 30, 31, 32, 87,
159n40, 170n68 88, 119, 123, 124, 150, 152, 159,
African American athletes, 3, 11, 179n63, 180n66, 180n74
30, 31, 64, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, Baudrillard, Jean, 65n, 165n9
89, 90, 92, 96, 116, 119–126, 152, BBC, 71
170n62, 170n65, 178n54 Benjamin, Walter, 42, 61
Aldrich, Robert, 90 Berger, Martin A., 47, 99, 101, 161n44
Ali Baba Goes to Town, 92 biographical documentary, 2, 3, 4, 9,
Ali, Muhammad, 120, 122, 124 10, 18, 27, 28, 30, 82, 84, 87, 88,
American flag, 11, 62 105, 111
Andersen, Margaret L., 123, 124, Birmingham, 12, 40, 42, 46–50, 58,
169n51 60, 161n12, 162n28
Apel, Dora, 59 black nationalism, 1, 7, 38, 89,
Aquin, Hubert, 84 102–106, 110–117, 120, 125
archival footage, 5, 7, 10, 12–15, Black Panther Party, 10, 13–15, 29,
21–23, 28–29, 34, 37, 38, 39, 42, 62, 64–65, 96–97, 101, 111–114,
43, 45, 48, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 150–151, 157n12, 171n73, 175n21,
62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 76, 83, 84, 176n29, 176n31
87, 97, 99, 110, 112, 113, 114, 118, black power, 29, 89, 99, 104, 105, 110,
134, 144, 145, 154, 158n25, 159n34, 112, 120
160n4 Black Starz, 3

205

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Blanchard, Terence, 25, 35, 36, 108, Chevrolet, 115, 116, 150, 177n41,
132 178n48
Blanco, Kathleen Babineaux, 57, 68, Chomsky, Noam, 142
77, 117 Citizen Kane, 30
Bloch, Marc, 66, 178n30 civil rights movement, xiii, 2, 3, 6,
Bogle, Donald, 91, 93, 169n54, 10, 13, 34, 38, 39, 40, 47, 48, 50,
171n68 51, 52, 55, 71, 80, 99, 100, 101,
Boyd-Franklin, Nancy, 69, 77 110, 116, 118, 121, 131, 150, 143,
Brando, Marlon, 14, 159n34 161n12, 161n24, 162n29
Brinkley, Douglas, 55, 71, 109, 110, class inequalities 106, 150
138, 139, 142, 144, 152, 166n19, Cleaver, Eldridge, 96, 176n29
174n17 Clockers, 1, 11
British Petroleum (BP), 25, 36, collective memory, 6, 37, 38, 40, 48,
106, 138, 143, 144, 145, 178n30, 121, 126
185n117, 186n123 Collins, Addie Mae, 12, 40, 45
Brown, James, 106 Collins, Patricia Hill, 123, 124,
Brown, Jim, 2, 8, 26, 27, 64, 82–96, 169n51
102, 106, 120–122, 124, 138, colorblind 59, 64, 101, 116
169n55 Comolli, Jean-Louis, 6
Brown, Melissa T., 115 conspiracy theory, 32–33, 54–56, 137,
Bryant, Kobe, 2, 3, 8, 24, 26, 27, 160n41, 163n41, 163n43
30–32, 122–123, 138, 150, 152–153 Convention Center, 35, 53, 62, 69, 70,
business, 1, 6, 54, 106, 118, 122, 123, 71, 72, 77, 129, 158n25, 182n86
125, 126, 128, 129, 138, 140, 148, corporate culture, 19, 20, 65, 103,
149, 150, 152, 178n47 106, 116, 118, 119, 124, 125, 126,
Bush, George W., 144 132, 137, 138, 141, 144, 146, 147,
148, 150, 152
Canizaro, Joseph, 127, 129, 181n79 crime, 1, 3, 11, 20, 21, 40, 47, 51, 53,
capitalism, 60, 81, 102, 105, 112, 147, 54, 65, 66, 71, 73, 76–81, 92, 93,
152 94, 116, 147, 151
Carlos, John, 120, 124 Crispin, Thurlow 130
Carmichael, Stokely, 97, 99, 112, 103, Crutcher, Michael E., 107
175n23, 176n29, 187n5 Cutler, Janet K. 2, 166n20
Carrington, Ben, 86, 92, 120
Carson, Clayborne, 115 Davis, Angela, 14, 176n29
Caruth, Cathy, 56 De Antonio, Emile, xii, xiii, 13, 23
Certeau, Michel de, 164n52 De Bois, W. E. B., 59, 69
Chambliss, Robert, 40, 41, 49 Debord, Guy, 86
Chapman, Jane, 16, 26, 158n17 Denhart, Hazel, 133
characterization, 6, 12, 14, 15, 16, 26, Desohn, Steven, 84
27, 28, 29, 34, 35, 98, 109, 114 Dewaard, Andrew, 103, 187n5
charter schools, 81, 117, 118, 147, discrimination, 12, 39, 50 55, 57, 75,
177n42, 177n43 87, 105, 113, 125, 131, 133, 135,
Cheney, Dick, 142 137, 148, 150

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Do the Right Thing, 1, 11, 16, 24, 119, football, 2, 24, 26, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86,
150 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 121, 125,
documentary modes: poetic, 9, 13, 128, 129, 130, 181n82
20, 22, 28, 43; expository, 9, 10, 13, Four Little Girls, xiii, 3, 6, 7, 12, 13,
28, 54, 163n40; observational, 4, 9, 21, 26, 28, 38, 40–45, 47–49, 52,
28; participatory, 5, 6, 9, 16, 28, 64; 58–60, 116, 150
reflexive, 6, 7, 9, 10, 15, 27, 28–36, Francesca, Mike, 95
37, 76, 77, 87, 141, 159n40; Freeman, Mike, 89
performative, 5, 9, 16–23, 28, Frisch, Michael, 48
160n42
Douglas, Emory, 100 Gabbard, Krin, 151
Dowd, Maureen, 144 Garvey, Marcus, 103
Drew, Robert, 141 General Motors, 103, 105, 115
Dynes, Russel R., 73, 166n21 gentrification, xi, 121, 137, 148,
Dyson, Michael Eric, 55, 74, 80 187n128
Gilroy, Paul, 116
economic empowerment, 103, 104, Greenwald, Robert, 77, 141, 147–148,
105, 106, 121, 122, 154 185n113
education, 19, 21, 34, 66, 70, 78, 81, Greenwood, Preston, 116
90, 104, 105, 116–118, 142, 151, Grierson, John, 9
168N51, 177n 44 Guerrero, Ed, 15, 91, 94, 153, 170n57,
Eisenstein, Sergei, 23 188n15
ESPN, 3, 31, 123, 126, 150, 180n74 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, 91
ethical issues, 27, 126, 140–148 Gulf Coast, 20–21, 24, 26, 28, 66, 141,
ethnicity, 11, 38, 106, 106, 123, 130, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148
133, 136, 153, 159n35, 164n48
Halbwachs, Maurice, 40, 42
fact and fiction, 11, 54 Halimi, Serge, 147
family photographs, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, Hamilton, Charles V., 112, 175n23
57, 58, 62 Hampton, Fred, 14, 113, 157n12
Fanon, Frantz, 105, 167n31, 173n7 Hanes, Arthur, Jr., 49, 59
Farrakhan, Louis, 104 Hariman, Robert, 63–64, 101
Fenster, Mark, 54, 55, 163n41 HBO, 3, 34, 142, 129
Ferro, Marc, 6, 37, 39 He Got Game, 1, 123, 124
fiction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, Headly, Bernard, 81
16, 24, 26, 28, 29, 34, 35, 54, 123, Hell, Julia, 130
150 Herman, Edward, 142
fiction and nonfiction, 2, 11, 13, 15, Herrington, Donnell, 79, 80, 81
26, 28, 29, 150 Hight, Craig, 32, 159n40, 160n42
financing, 3, 103, 123, 126, 152, 153, Hoop Dreams, 123, 126, 180n74
154, 188n15 Hoover, J. Egdar, 14, 29, 113, 114
Fingers, 94 housing projects, 23, 127, 131, 133,
Fiske, John, 76 134, 135, 136, 137, 140, 147
Fleetwood, Nicole R., 60 Humble, 25, 36, 139

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Hurricane Katrina, xiii, 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, Kellner, Douglas, 30, 31, 93, 120,
17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 32–39, 52–57, 158n21
60, 62, 65–77, 79, 102, 107–109, King, Martin Luther, Jr., 3, 14, 101,
117, 127–131, 133, 135–138, 140, 102, 105, 115, 118
143–144, 147, 148, 150, 152–153, Klotman, Phyllis R., 2, 166n20
157, 162n36, 163n38, 164n48, Kobe Doin’ Work, 3, 27, 30–32,
166n19, 166n21, 167n23 122–123, 150, 152–153
Hutton, Bobby, 14, 113, 159n34 Koven, Mikel J., 94
Kracauer, Siegfried, 43
Ice Station Zebra, 90 Ku Klux Klan, 60
iconic photographs, 3, 34, 39, 46, 48,
57–62, 63, 64, 99, 100, 114 Landrieu, Mitch, 24, 35, 138, 143
If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Landsberg, Alison, 38
Rise, 3, 4, 6, 7, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, Lane, Jeffrey, 124
23, 24, 34, 35, 36, 56, 61, 68, 75, Leacock, Richard, 141, 185n109
78, 81, 82, 106, 116, 117, 126–131, Lewis, Peirce F., 129, 134, 135,
133–134, 137, 138, 142, 144, 150, 181n80, 182n85, 184n99, 184n100
152 Lipman, Pauline, 81, 117, 177n44
In the Year of the Pig, 23 Lipsitz, George, 52
Lower Ninth Ward, é22, 24? 33, 35,
Jackson, Alphonso, 136 53, 70, 118, 126, 127, 131, 132, 134,
Jackson, Jesse, 151 139, 140, 152, 180n77, 183n97
Jackson, Michael, 2, 3, 8, 21, 30, 32, Lucaites, John Luis, 63–64, 101
106, 110, 111, 120, 149 lynching, 25, 58, 59, 60, 80
Jaworski, Adam, 130
Jay, Kathryn, 88, 89, 121, 123, 126, Malcolm X, 1, 11, 38, 62, 141
128, 181n82 Malcolm X, 14, 97, 98, 104, 105, 106,
jazz, 1, 31, 60, 61, 107–110, 174n15 110, 112, 122, 131, 171n72,
Jeanette, Joe, 92 172n78
Jennings, James, 70 Manhood, 91, 97, 162n29
Jim Brown: All American, 3, 26, 38, Marable, Manning, 57, 58, 104
64, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 89, 93, 120, Margonelli, Lisa, 142, 145
126, 180n75 McLaughlin, Thomas, 123, 179n63
Johnson, Cedric, 114, 114, 145, 147, McNair, Chris, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50
177n43 McNair, Denise, 12, 40, 42, 44? 46,
Johnson, John Lester, 92 48, 49, 50
Jordan, Michael, 3, 8, 31, 119, 120, McNair, Maxine, 50, 51
124, 125, 178n55, 179n65 Make It Right Foundation, 139, 140,
journalism, 71, 72, 77, 93, 166n18 152, 180n77, 203
Juakali, Endesha, 24, 131, 137 Messner, Michael, 90, 169n51
Jungle Fever, 1 Micheaux, Oscar, 149
Jushnick, Louis, 70 middle-class values, 70, 71, 77, 105,
135, 150
Karenga, Maulana, 114, 175n31 Miller, Patrick D., 86, 88

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Miracle at St. Anna, 2 Obama, Barack, 36, 118, 144, 145,

Mizelle, Richard, Jr., 168, 167n23 185n117
Mo’ Better Blues, 1 oil, 20, 25, 36, 38, 141–147, 151
Modell, Art, 86, 87, 90, 181n82 oral history, 39, 48–52, 56, 58
Mohammed, Elijah, 104 Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on
Monahan, Brian A., 65 Journalism, 77
money, 52, 70, 89, 104, 116, 117, 118, Owens, Jesse, 116
123, 124, 125, 132, 133, 137, 147,
150, 152, 154 Parker, Martin, 160n41, 163n43
Montana-Leblanc, Phyllis, 17–20, 25, Parks, Rosa, 100, 101, 110, 188n14
26, 27 Penn, Sean, 152
Moore, Michael, 21, 141, 158n21, Pennebaker, D. A., 141
188n10 photography, 13, 16, 28, 31, 36, 37,
Morial, Marc, 57, 67 42–48, 57–65, 74, 75, 93, 96, 99,
Morris, Errol, xiii, 13, 157n10 101, 112, 114, 117, 118, 134, 139,
Morrison, Toni, 100 161n24
music, 2, 3, 5, 12, 14, 16, 22, 30, Pitt, Brad, 21, 35, 139, 152, 181
31, 35, 52, 58, 60, 61, 68, 89, 94, Poitier, Sidney, 91, 169n54, 170n57
103, 106–111, 117, 128, 133, 142, poverty, 19, 20, 54, 66, 69, 70, 77, 81,
145, 149, 157n15, 173n12, 174n13, 106, 110, 135, 136, 137, 174n11
174n15, 174n17 Pouzoulet, Catherine, 11
music videos, 110, 117
race and class, 1, 2, 7, 8, 21, 24, 39,
Naggin, Ray C., 57, 67, 68, 77, 127, 48, 53, 71, 106, 116, 124, 127, 133,
128, 135, 136, 137, 181 136, 143, 150, 151
NBC, 71, 154 racial issues, 10, 19, 70, 88, 120, 154
Nelson, George, xi, 152 racism, xi, xiii, 10, 11, 22, 24, 49, 56,
New Orleans, 2, 3, 4, 10, 18–22, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65, 69, 72, 73, 75,
24–24, 33–39, 52–56, 60–21, 66–79, 76, 77, 80, 86, 87, 88, 96, 99, 101,
81, 107–108, 126–148, 150–153, 112, 120, 132, 150
174n13, 174n17, 177n43, 180n77, rap music, 18, 72, 78, 79, 80, 110
181n79, 181n80, 181n81, 182n85, Radstone, Susannah, 51
182n86, 183n99, 184n100 refugee, 56, 75
Newton, Huey, 10, 13, 14, 15, 29, 64, reconstruction, 2, 21, 34, 35, 38,
91, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 105, 52, 53, 57, 66, 81, 109, 127, 128,
111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 150 129, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137, 138,
Newton, Judith, 77 139, 140, 143, 147, 148, 151, 153,
Nichols, Bill, 3, 4, 9, 13, 16, 28, 29, 157n15, 163n92
36, 62, 140, 156n4, 157n11, 163n40, Reid, Mark A., xi–xiii
182n88 Renov, Michael, 15, 141
Nike, 8, 103, 118, 119, 123, 124, 125, Rhodes, Jane, 99
126, 152, 154 Ricœur, Paul, 39–40, 160n7
Nora, Pierre, 39 Riefenstahl, Leni, 116, 177n40
Nunberg, Geoffrey, 75 Riot, 91

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Robertson, Carole, 12, 40, 41, 42 Syracuse University, 87, 88, 89, 90
Rodriguez, Havidan, 166
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 24, 63,
Take a Hard Ride, 91
134, 136, 137, 145
Tarzan’s Revenge, 92
Roscoe, Jane, 32, 159n40, 160n42
television, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17,
Roussel, Violaine, 151
31, 38, 48, 60, 63, 65, 66, 68–74,
Russel, Honore L., 77
76, 77, 84–85, 89, 93, 96, 101, 107,
113, 115, 129, 137, 141, 145, 149,
Schöle, Andreas, 130
153, 154
School Daze, 1, 11
The Dirty Dozen, 90, 91
Seale, Bobby, 29, 97, 176n29
Till, Emmett, 80
segregation, 12, 40, 42, 46, 48, 49, 50,
Tse-Tung, Mao, 98, 171n77
51, 53, 55, 58, 60, 73, 87, 89, 100,
trauma, 22, 46, 48, 50, 51, 55, 56, 66,
114, 134, 150, 179n57
72–76, 80, 107, 117, 127, 129, 130,
She Hate Me, 1
135, 140, 167n23
She’s Gotta Have it, 1, 103, 119, 154,
188n12
Shockley, Evie, 60, 127, 131, 132, 134, Vale, Lawrence J., 130
174n13, 182n98 Vallas, Paul, 117
skin color, 38, 81, 93 Van Peebles, Melvin, 91
Slaughter, 91 Vietnam, 14, 23, 112, 120
slavery, 73, 117, 121, 138, 154, 173n2, voice-over commentary, 24, 27, 32,
179n57 54, 61, 68, 78, 82, 84, 86, 89, 113,
Smith, Roger Guenveur, 13–15, 29, 115, 116, 125, 152
96–98, 101, 111, 159n34
Smith, Tommie, 120, 124
Welch, Raquel, 94
Smith, Valerie, 45, 48
Wesley, Cynthia, 12, 40
Sontag, Susan, 43, 46, 58
West, Cornel, 64
soundtrack, 79, 82, 84, 94, 96, 112,
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem
139, 145, 157n15
in Four Acts, 3, 4, 7, 17, 19, 22, 25,
Sparks, Robert, 119
26, 32, 33–36, 39, 52, 55, 57, 60,
Spike DDB, 103, 115, 119, 149, 203
61, 65, 66, 70, 76, 78, 107, 108, 109,
sports documentary, 3, 11, 26, 32,
116, 131, 137, 141, 142, 146, 150,
82–95, 106, 113, 119, 129, 138,
157n15, 160n42
150–152
Wiggins, David K., 88
stereotypes, 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 36, 63, 65,
Wild Man from Borneo, 92
70, 76, 82, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 100,
Wiley, Ralph, 88, 124, 159n35
101, 106, 110, 130
Williams, Linda, 93, 170n64
Superdome, 35, 69, 70, 77, 127,
Wilson, Brian, 119
128–131, 137, 158, 181n80, 182n85,
Wooten, John, 121
182n86
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, 90,
91, 92, 94 Yamato, Gloria, 81

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