Inside Man
August 19, 2018 6:35 PM   Subscribe

BlackKklansman (previously, fanfare) is the story of the black cop who infiltrated the KKK and the latest success of director Spike Lee. The film has earned frequent comparisons to Sorry to Bother You, "the most shocking anti-capitalist film ever?", but Boots Riley, frontman of The Coup and director of that movie might have a thing or too to say about that. Lee, meanwhile, very much sees his film as a response to the Trump presidency, which has "given the green light to the Klan".
posted by Artw (27 comments total) 32 users marked this as a favorite
 
(I was going to go for KKK Snitch as a title, but that seened a bit much to leave at the top of people’s browser windows. Anyway, shout out to all Bodycount fans)
posted by Artw at 6:51 PM on August 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


Cointelpro NARA Archive, which I think has been linked previously
posted by eustatic at 7:22 PM on August 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Anything that discomfits those who seek to make lesser of others is ok by me.
posted by drewbage1847 at 7:42 PM on August 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


At the same time: “Sorry To Bother You’s” female lead is more symbol than person (Jourdain Searles for Bitch Media)
posted by cendawanita at 7:55 PM on August 19, 2018 [10 favorites]


This film has been advertised in a curious way on NPR: "the story of the first black man to infiltrate the KKK..." Every time I hear it, I wonder if it's "the first and only," or if the protagonist is just the first in a long line of black guys who infiltrated various KKK chapters. I like the latter reading better: it makes me think of warnings circulated by fax among klansmen: "watch out for dem black guys, deys verra sneaky! You can't even tell by tha color of they skin whether theys a black man or not!" And the warning gets lost among all the other Fake News, and boom, another chapter taken down!
posted by spacewrench at 9:14 PM on August 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


I liked the film, but I felt that Boots Riley's critique of it was totally on point. Lee made a lot of weird changes to the real-life story that only served to make the police more sympathetic in a way that really didn't pass the sniff test, even sitting in the theater before I knew anything at all about the true story.

The scene in the bar at the end of the movie is just ludicrously off-base, that did not and would not ever happen in real life.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:17 PM on August 19, 2018 [9 favorites]


It's just nice to see people excited about Spike Lee. It feels like the world's caught up to him.
posted by Merus at 9:17 PM on August 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


SPOILER!!!






Didn't feel that the "scene in the bar at the end" was to show cops in a favorable light; the scene at the end was a set up to make the viewer feel great before everything crashes.
posted by artof.mulata at 9:28 PM on August 19, 2018 [13 favorites]


It’s definitely the film in genre mode, setting up a little roller coaster ride of switches in genre at the end.

And yet, yeah, Boots Riley makes some valid points.
posted by Artw at 9:45 PM on August 19, 2018


I enjoyed both movies a lot but BlackkKlansmen felt like an older artist connecting to historic trends and current events but Sorry To Bother To You felt like the future.

I thought it was very well telling that, when I saw Blackkklansman it was in a full theater of mostly much older white people and I'm 90% sure the footage at the end was the first time they saw it but I knew it was coming cause comrades on twitter had said things like "Oh yeah you can hear me scream at the of the movie so FYI if you don't want to go through that again."
posted by The Whelk at 10:39 PM on August 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


Controversies noted. I researched one particular topic to send to my daughter, who was a fetus at the time, but it's pretty interesting. Various white supremacists got the Denver state capitol stage at a MLK march in January 1992. We were there, but couldn't hear anything. The white guys were far away and drowned out by the cop copters.

I found out that three friends of mine were taping the whole event. They said they were from the news, so they got access to stuff I'd never heard. Skinheads inside the capitol building yelling Seig Heil before getting on the sheriff's bus to safety. An Aryan Nation gal.

Relevant here, if you want to look at the link: the Klansmen at the rally spoke exactly the same rhetoric as Lee documented. I guess it hasn't changed much, but, still, if you've seen the (excellent) movie, be assured that the locution of the KKK in the film was entirely accurate.
posted by kozad at 10:39 PM on August 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


The KKK feels like my parents' racist bogeyman. Sure they still exist, but when I think "white supremacists," I think of a brigade of Twitter fuckheads doxxing someone and sending the cops to their house. I think of Reddit trolls sharing strategies and honing their hateful ideologies on message boards, of spittle-flecked Youtube conspiracy theorists appearing in my "watch next" recommendations, of pickup trucks with Thin Blue Line and Gadsden Flag stickers, of my neighbor flying a red "TRUMP" flag on their front lawn. I think of cops. I think of Republicans. And I think of it all being mixed up in a stew of violent misogyny, gun rights activism, evangelical Christianity, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia. xenophobia, and antisemitism—with a dollop of climate change demialism, flat earth theory, and general anti-intellectualism for good measure.

Good ol' boys in white robes and hoods feel less relevant, in this current iteration of American fascism.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:15 AM on August 20, 2018 [13 favorites]


I would suggest that treating the Klan like bogeymen is part of how we got into our current mess.
posted by hoyland at 3:54 AM on August 20, 2018 [9 favorites]


I think I meant the word a little differently than you took it. I wasn't trying to imply that they're mythical.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:03 AM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


But the entire point of the movie’s end (and whether or not it succeeds in doing this is up for debate) is to draw a direct line between yesterday’s bogeyman KKK and today’s alt-right so the movie itself exists to comment on their relevance to us.
posted by Yoko Ono's Advice Column at 5:43 AM on August 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


And yes, I’d say the whole hilarious stupidity of the racist-cop-gets-his scene was intentional for several reasons:

1) Spike can be unexpectedly sentimental sometimes; he wanted to give the audience a little fantasy wrapped up like a present with a bow on it because we won’t ever get that in real life;
2) It gives Laura Harrier’s character, who we know will be fighting for justice with mixed/limited success her entire life, a tiny victory;
3) It’s unrealistic enough that the audience should be saying, “Wait, something more is coming. This is the lullaby before the nightmare” and has a heightened awareness of something terrible on the horizon, and then there’s that sucker punch: The horrible villain is us, the present.
posted by Yoko Ono's Advice Column at 5:55 AM on August 20, 2018 [4 favorites]


Fuck the police but I think it's kind of awkward and unfortunate that Riley is putting so much energy into critiquing this movie and at the same time refusing to acknowledge the gendered problems with his own.

I don't think movie critiques are a great use of his activist or creative energies but, I guess it's his life.
posted by latkes at 5:57 AM on August 20, 2018 [2 favorites]


Idk, I sure didn’t think BKKK was pro-cop and NYPD propaganda the way Boots does (admittedly I’m a middle-aged white woman so what do I know) but I thought this tweet of his hits on such an important point: “I want to make clear that I support changing true stories. I definitely will. The question is- what story do the changes tell? What are you changing that world to say?”
posted by Yoko Ono's Advice Column at 6:27 AM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't think movie critiques are a great use of his activist or creative energies but, I guess it's his life.

It's not like he's criticizing the cinematography, he's criticizing the institution of the police by way of Lee's portrayal. One might disagree with his reading of the film - I haven't seen it - but the point Riley is making couldn't be more appropriate from the standpoint of his activist energies.
posted by atoxyl at 8:56 AM on August 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


Getting into a super specific showdown with Spike Lee about this one film is what troubles me, especially in the context of his unwillingness to acknowledge that his own movie has precisely two female characters to the ten or so male speaking parts, and both the women in his movie want to fuck the male lead.

Love Boots Riley and hope he continues on. And Spike Lee has been complicated and troubling for a long time (luv to advertise for Nike 4eva), but the whole movie industry sucks and is incredibly regressive and I just think going on a one man Twitter campaign against this one movie is, not a choice I would make. And as he's someone who has done his share of in person organizing I'm kind of surprised. Anyhow, it's his choice.
posted by latkes at 9:46 AM on August 20, 2018


latkes: "I think it's kind of awkward and unfortunate that Riley is putting so much energy into critiquing this movie and at the same time refusing to acknowledge the gendered problems with his own. "

If I'm understanding correctly, you believe that the fact that Riley didn't have enough strong female representation in his movie is a reason that he shouldn't critique the lionization of a police officer for protecting black people, when his actual real life achievement was ruining black people's lives?

I think that this is not a tenable position.
posted by TypographicalError at 9:54 AM on August 20, 2018 [7 favorites]


No big deal, we disagree, and that's ok.

I think his critiques of Blackkklansman make sense. I think his choice to focus his energy on the problematic aspects of that film, especially in the shitty environment of Twitter, while at the same time, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge valid critiques of the sexist aspects of his own film, looks bad on him.

But again, no problem if we have different opinions on this.

I don't rate the struggle for women's rights over or under the struggle to end state violence or the racist police state. These are overlapping struggles, and in other contexts Riley has spoken up against both.
posted by latkes at 10:21 AM on August 20, 2018


latkes: "I don't rate the struggle for women's rights over or under the struggle to end state violence or the racist police state."

This is arguably not about "women's rights" so much as a single artistic choice that Boots Riley made that was (in your opinion) morally incorrect. In your words he's not anti-women's-rights in general. But in this case it's important to put this out and shut him down?
posted by TypographicalError at 12:49 PM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Mod note: folks this thread is in danger of becoming about Boots Riley and not Spike Lee's movie. Which is a choice you can make but I might suggest against it.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:06 PM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]


Relevant to the framing of this post, Riley has commented on journalists' portrayal of his response to BlacKKKlansman as an "attack":

I guess we should call all people who write critiques "attackers" now. It's a whole field "Film Attack". I spent the beginning of the thing saying that I idolize Spike and called the movie "masterful craftwork".

Also, this was recently added to the mix:

Spike Lee Consulted On NYPD Ad Campaign For $200K

The fee paid to Lee's company came from the New York City Police Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the NYPD that has come under scrutiny in recent years for acting as an arm of the police department without any real oversight.
posted by mediareport at 1:17 PM on August 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


Sooo..... I read Boots' full reply (which I hadn't before!) and saw Blackkklansman (which I hadn't before!), and my two cents on this topic (which, I think this post is about the movie and Boots' response to it?) is:

I had only read Boots' twitter comments, and I was sort of sad to see him dissing Lee's movie in the context of twitter, because it's such a bad forum for public discussion and it looked kind of petty to my eye. Reading his full response, it seems totally accurate, and I feel less down on it than I did when it was just some twitter critiques. So, go Boots Riley, correct the historical record and discuss the problems with valorizing cops and projecting anti-racist action onto them. I feel silly I hadn't read his full response before forming my thoughts about it.

But having said that, having now seen the movie, I think he didn't give Lee quite enough credit for the movie being more of a parable. I mean, the scene where (spoilers) the cop and the black radical set up the racist cop together was embarrassingly wrong (what was he arrested for? This was the decade when cops were literally blowing up black radicals in their homes) but still, ultimately in it's penultimate scenes, I think Lee was asking, "Should we work from the inside or work from the outside?" and critically, I don't think he answered that question, which I appreciate. I don't think we actually know the answer to that question.

It's funny to me now that I've seen it how much Sorry to Bother You and Blackkklansman share thematically, between White Voice being so central to both plots and them sharing the same basic trope in their female leads (the girlfriend is the more radical & the voice of conscience in both movies . And in both movies she (spoiler) says she can't be with the lead anymore because of his bad politics, and then gets back with him anyway (although I guess that's more ambiguous in Blackkklansman - she does definitely stand side-by-side with him after that). But I guess one big difference is Blackkklansman, while a very pointed movie about white supremacy and violence, is basically only about that. Where, given Riley's politics, he made a movie about capitalism and state violence AND also white supremacy which is intermeshed with capitalist oppression in the US. Sooo.... I don't know.

I thought both movies had some limitations - notably around gender (which, I mean, having two female characters, one of whom is a girlfriend mostly there to serve the character development of the lead, in a large cast of men is never a neutral choice) (Amusing to me, Blackkklansman only passed the bechdel test when the female librarian handed off some microfilm). But anyway, they were both very thoughtful and affecting movies in different ways. And I appreciated the weirdness of both of them - with STBY being, clearly, more weird, but Spike Lee still having a really quirky specific visual language.

I found the last footage in Blackkklansman incredibly powerful. But it is a more dark and hopeless message than Sorry to Bother You. Blackkklansman is set in a sort of utopian world where the black radicals and cops are working together to fight racism, but it has an ultimately almost hopeless message given where we are now. Whereas STBY is sort of optimistic in a dystopic world.

In conclusion, thank you for coming to my TED talk.
posted by latkes at 9:24 PM on August 23, 2018 [2 favorites]




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