CINEMA: Do The Right Thing – And Do It Yourself

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Beverly Andrews

LONDON, Mar 5 1996 (IPS) - ‘Clockers’, the most recent film by American director Spike Lee, has received far less hostile reactions from the media than some of his previous works.

Lee shot to fame a bit more than a decade ago with the low budget his ‘She’s Gotta Have It’. Made on a shoestring, the film went on to gross millions internationally.

Later Lee gained both fame and criticism for his works ‘Do The Right Thing’ – about the run up to riots, which seemed to eerily predict real-life events taking place several years later in Los Angeles – ‘Junge Fever’, ‘Malcolm X’ and others.

Lee thinks the positive reception of ‘Clockers’ is not because his work and his views would have become more acceptable to the mainstream press. Rather, he said during a recent interview in London, it is because his latest film happens not to take on the thorny issue of race relations in the United States.

With ‘Clockers’, Lee said, “I wanted to do a film that would address the problem of drugs in America – a problem which is tearing a lot of inner cities apart – and I wanted a film which would address the problem of black on black violence.”

The film is based on a novel by screenwriter Richard Price. The book, also called ‘Clockers’ took more than four years to research. It takes a look at the crack industry from investigating cop to teenage millionaires whose life expectancy can be measured in months.

“A novel cannot be about advocacy,” said Price. It has to be “about empathising with both sides. I am saying: ‘Look, this is what it’s like to be this kid’.

“You might say he’s a drugdealer and a predator and he’s destroying his own race, I’m not going to argue with that. But before you deny these people their humanity because you don’t understand them or they frighten you or enrage you, imagine that you were born where they were, with those limited choices.” (MORE)

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