20 - Mixed-Genre and Cinematic Success in Chi-Raq

Show Notes

Thinking through the problem of mixed-genre in Spike Lee's 2015 film Chi-Raq, how it operates as a fragmented address to gun violence, and how that address clarifies our criteria for a successful cinematic work. In particular, I am interested in how the farcical story of a sex strike, the melodrama elements of storytelling, and quasi-documentary moments combine to instruct morally and politically. That instruction, I argue, is an extension of Lee's broad political values - embodied in the figure and film Malcolm X - around Black communities healing themselves rather than waiting for systemic change or changes in white people and white social-political structures.

What is Spike Lee's Joints?

20-30 minute reflections on particular Spike Lee films, from School Daze up through Black KkKlansman - précis for a book-length study of Lee's cinema, reflections on a course I've taught a number of times at Amherst College and University of Maryland. In these podcast pieces, I pay particular attention to issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality as they emerge inside particular films and in the history-memory of African American life. How does Lee's cinema think? How does sound and image help us understand representation of Black bodies, Black people, and Black life? What are Lee's innovations, what challenges does he present us with in sound and image? And how can we see questions of masculinity, gender and racial formation, historical violence, and institutional violence evolve across his decades of filmmaking?