The Spike Lee Reader

by Massood, Paula J.

• ISBN13: 9781592134847
• ISBN10: 159213484X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-02-01
• Publisher: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Summary

Spike Lee's films have raised a multitude of questions about cinema, from attempts to outline the nature, or "essence," of a black cinematic aesthetics, to a revisioning of American film as a whole. They have sparked critical inquiries into the nature of genres, the role of the auteur, and the mechanics of an active text and an oppositional spectatorship. They have asked us to reconsider spectatorial pleasure; to revel in their polyphonic visual and aural fields. They consider not only race, but also the often blurred interconnections among race, gender, sexuality, and class. In short, they have encouraged, and, in some cases, forced us to interact with what's on screen and, perhaps more importantly, with each other, whether it be in the theater, the café, the classroom, or the street corner. Taken together, the essays in The Spike Lee Reader will spark dialogue and encourage a continuing consideration of the depth and complexity of Spike Lee's career.Contributors include Christine Acham, Toni Cade Bambara, Mark D. Cunningham, Anna Everett, Krin Gabbard, Ed Guerrero, bell hooks, Michele Wallace and many others.

Author Biography

Paula J. Massood is Associate Professor of Film Studies, Department of Film, Brooklyn College, CUNY, and author of Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film (Temple).

Table of Contents

The Spike Lee Reader

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

We've Gotta Have It: Spike Lee

African American Film, and Cinema Studies

'Whose Pussy is This': A Feminist Comment bell hooks

Programming with School

Spike Lee and Black Women

But Compared to What?: Reading Realism, Representation, and Essentialism in School Daze

Do the Right Thing, and the Spike Lee Discourse

The Double Truth, Ruth: Do the Right Thing and the Culture of Ambiguity

Spike Lee and the Fever in the Racial

'Spike, Don't Mess Malcolm Up': Courting Controversy and Control in Malcolm X-The Movie

Through the Looking Glass and Over the Rainbow: Exploring the Fairy Tale in Spike Lee's Crooklyn

Clockers (Spike Lee 1995): Adaptation in Black

Reel Men: Get on the Bus and the Shifting Terrain of Black

We Shall Overcome: Preserving History and Memory in 4 Little Girls

Spike Lee Meets Aaron Copeland

Race and Black American Film Noir: Summer of Sam as Lynching Parable

Racial Kitsch and Black Performance

I Be Smackin' My Hoes': Paradox and Authenticity in

De Profundis: A Love letter from the Inside Man

Notes on Contributors

Select Bibliography

Filmography (including exec. prod. credits and television segments)

Index

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