Spike Lee is among the more accomplished film creators of his time. For his direction and production of critically acclaimed films like “Da 5 Bloods,” “Oldboy,” and “BlacKkKlansman,” Lee has received an Oscar, BAFTA, two Emmy awards, and two Peabody awards, among dozens of others. The Library of Congress has also selected four of his movies for preservation in the National Film Registry.
He’s also never shied from calling out blaxploitation when he sees it.
Blaxploitation is a subgenre of film that emerged in the 1970s, and the phrase itself is a fusion of “Black” and “exploitation.” These films all had some underlying commonalities. They were independently created by Black filmmakers for Black audiences with often miniscule budgets. Most of the time, “respectable” movie theaters didn’t show these films, due to the pervasive themes of crime, drugs, and racial tension. Any list of the most impactful blaxploitation movies include “Shaft,” “Super Fly,” and “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” to name a few.
The genre’s heyday in the 1970s launched longstanding Hollywood careers, but not everyone was on board with the genre’s popularity. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was one such critic.
Alongside the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the NAACP formed the Coalition Against Blaxploitation Group (CAB). CAB organized boycotts and protests at theaters showing such films in a bid to depict more positive depictions of Black protagonists and culture. By the 1980s, CAB had mostly accomplished its goal. Amid growing backlash and familiar storylines, blaxploitation’s heyday came to an end. Content like “Luke Cage” and Spike Lee’s own “Do The Right Thing” are evidence of the subgenre’s lasting impact among filmmakers. That doesn’t mean, however, that the debates of the 1970s are over.
After Quentin Tarantino released “Django Unchained,” a movie criticized for its violence and gratuitous use of racial slurs, Spike Lee publicly called him out. He tweeted that “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust.” This interaction marked the second time Lee had leveled such complaints – the first was following the release of Jackie Brown in 1997. In both cases, Tarantino replied that to criticize his use of the n-word because he’s white is racist.
The two blockbuster filmmakers have not publicly reconciled their feud.
What’s important is communities of color’s willingness to call out problematic behavior. Amid raging debates over critical race theory and concepts like equity and historical injustice, we can’t ignore even borderline-problematic content. To ignore this issue is to give into public pressure to not discuss such themes. It’s to concede defeat in the fight for social justice. Our continued struggle begins with conversation, debate, and examining the past. We cannot abandon this foundation, no matter the topic at hand.
