From Spike Lee to Ryan Coogler: Enjoy 5 essential films made by black filmmakers
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Spike Lee talks Hollywood: “F**k John Wayne…and John Ford”
With powerful conviction and a stylish eye for filmmaking, director Spike Lee has become one of the most prolific black voices of the modern era, having brought the likes of Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X and BlacKkKlansman across the course of his extraordinary 42-year career. With the ongoing battle for black civil rights acting as a constant source of inspiration for the filmmaker, Lee uses the issue of racial injustice to fuel a particularly noble significance present in each and every one of his films.
As a result of putting this issue at the very forefront of his career, Spike Lee has become known as one of the most outspoken contemporary filmmakers on race, using his platform to speak about the injustices of contemporary society. Having long been criticised for its racist views, Lee went after Hollywood in 2018, speaking at BAFTA’s David Lean Lecture in London, Lee vented his annoyances about the historic depiction of minorities in cinema.
Inspired to state his point of view after showing a clip from his undervalued 2000 film Bamboozled, Lee went into a passionate rant against the industry, stating, “This movie is about demonisation and degradation of black people. That’s what Hollywood does. Imagery is powerful”. Contextualising the film within the history of American cinema, Lee notes that Bamboozled was released around 100 years after the dawn of cinema, with the film reflecting on how black people had been treated since the dawn of the silver screen.
Though, as Spike Lee asserts, whilst seeing black people on screen is important, “the fight has always been about who is going to tell the story. That’s what makes history”. With Hollywood being dominated by white make directors and screenwriters for decades, Lee recognises that “those people have done a lot of damage,” with the image of black people having been tarnished after years of cinematic racism.
Taking this one step further, the filmmaker pinpoints two director’s in particular that he thinks have been detrimental to the makeup of American cinema. Speaking at the event, Lee stated, “I’ve never been a fan of John Wayne and John Ford and that cowboy bullshit. I hate them: Native Americans depicted as savages and animals…Fuck John Wayne and John Ford”.
It’s no surprise that Lee has such a strong view of the western genre, with one of the oldest Hollywood genres having long-held archaic beliefs about the makeup of American society, supporting a romantic vision of old America. Though John Ford, the director of The Searchers, Stagecoach and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is known for pioneering the western genre, he was also responsible for supporting such attitudes throughout several of his films.
“The US was built upon genocide, stealing the land, and stealing Africans from their land to work the land they stole. Black people built America…A narrative was hijacked,” Spike Lee continued in his powerful stance against early Hollywood cinema. Purporting such a racist agenda, Lee argues that it is the likes of directors such as John Ford who helped create propaganda in Hollywood cinema. Powerfully concluding his thoughts on the matter, Lee announces, “We’ve been dying from the get go and still today we haven’t achieved our rights. We are shot down left and right by cops. Film and TV media have been used to tell lies”.
Forever fighting the battle for black civil rights, Spike Lee is an unparalleled ambassador for the cause.
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