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 Race Relations Through Film:“BlacKkKlansman” and the White AudienceMandeq HassanHistory 401: Hearing Seeing Speaking HistoryNovember 19, 2018Many historical films do the initial leg work of painting an image of the past and the experiences of the people who lived through it to a general audience. Though historical films can only showcase a singular interpretation of the past, they often also speak to the values and issues of time period in which the film was made. Spike Lee’s film “BlacKkKlansman” utilizes a dramatized version of Ron Stallworth’s experiences in the 1970s to craft a criticism of American race relations in 2018. The film’s characters, both those based on real life people such as Ron Stallworth and the fictional composite characters such as Stallworth’s girlfriend - Patrice Dumas, paint a picture of what race relations were like in the United States at the time from three perspectives. One perspective is from Black radical leftists like Kwame Ture and Black Student Union leader Patrice, another being from the racist white supremacists of the Klu Klux Klan, and finally from the perspective of a moderate Black police officer, Ron Stallworth. Lee uses each of these perspectives and the characters that represent them to not only cover the spectrum of politics in the United States in the 1970s, but also to make the film’s moderate protagonist seem the most rational on the spectrum, essentially creating a safe middle ground for the white target audience to identify with. As a historical artefact of 2018, “BlacKkKlansman” embodies respectability politics in order to illustrate a skewed view of the 1970s, which make white audiences comfortable with a sanitized form of Black radicalism.The audience itself is one of the most important informants to the content of the film and it’s interpretation of the 1970s as a means to explain what race relations are in the Trump era. “BlacKkKlansman” was made for a white audience who place themselves somewhere in the centrist or slightly right leaning area of the contemporary American political spectrum. The target audience is most clearly defined in the end scenes where found footage of the white supremacist attack on Charlottesville protesters was incorporated in the film along with a memorial to Heather Heyer, a white woman who had been killed in the attack. “BlacKkKlansman” makes two things clear in ending the film in this way; one, he draws direct comparison to the white supremacists of the 1970s (and further back to the 1910s through D.W Griffiths’ film, “The Birth of a Nation”) to the the white supremacists of the 21st century and two, he paints the villains of discrimination to be white supremacists who hurt everyone, regardless of their race. This conclusion is problematic for a number of reasons. The film for the most part ignores the role of institutions in upholding and perpetuating white supremacy, except for a couple of lines of dialogue where the police chief acknowledges a fellow police officers racist actions and dismiss it as something they can do nothing about. As a reflection of the contemporary political arena, where racist white radicalism is growing with the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and the rise of the “alt-right” as an emboldened national reaction to Trump, “BlacKkKlansman” is a safe space for the white conservatives and liberals as well. In dedicating the film to and memorializing Heather Heyer, whose death was a result of White supremacy and a tragedy, Lee is actively making choice to ignore or leave out the numerous deaths of Black people at the hands of racist institutions like the police, who the film conclusively commends. The very fact that Stallworth is a police officer, the city’s first Black police officer, is never fully explored. Instead, the audience is shown the injustices the Stallworth faces as a Black man, both in and out of uniform, despite the legislative victories of the 1960s Civil Rights movement which prohibited discrimination in the workplace. The audience is also shown how Stallworth is seemingly alienated by the Black community for his support of the police. The film never delves deeply into the context of why there is such deep tensions between the police and Black people and the film fails to address how insidious and deeply rooted anti-Black racism is within the police. Lee does not address the issues because it alienates the moderate white audience, who are not ready to understand that the foundation of the United States and the institutions that hold it up are inherently racist in their formation and continued actions. The police force as an institution have long done the legwork of white supremacy in brutalizing and terrorizing Black people and their communities. Black police officers themselves have been used to justify anti-black racism perpetrated by the police, particularly in their repression of Black movements and protests. “BlacKkKlansman” criticism of an individual racist police officer rather than the police as an institution and the films defense of the police through Stallworth’s character has the same effect of justifying police actions. In considering the film as commentary on 21st century race relations, the film misses the crucial and indisputable presence of the anti-policing stance that the Black Lives Matter movement takes. Charles P. Linscott’s analysis of the movement paints a picture of race relations that align with the realities of race relations in the mid to late 20th century and in the present: “...[Black Lives Matter] assault on the structural foundations and specific instantiations of anti-black violence, the movement is thoroughly entangled in both the present and the past.”This also again makes it clear who this film targets; not the Black youth and community members who make up and support Black Lives Matter, but the white audiences who cannot or will not recognize the police as agents of white supremacy. Lee shifts the blame to something that is easier for the moderate white audience to stomach - the Klu Klux Klan. The moderate white audience can safely distance themselves from the Klu Klux Klan and their extreme actions without accountability and place the horrors or racism with them.Spike Lee as the creator of “BlacKkKlansman” holds particular weight given his history of shifting the normativity of Whiteness in western film, his overt politicism in his films and his reputation as the preeminent auteur of Black film. As Dan Flory notes in his article “Spike Lee and the Sympathetic Racist”, Lee’s filmography have been “crossover” films that allow white audiences to understand his interpretations of Blackness and the experience of racism - usually as a retaliation to and at the expense of Black women. Flory explains how one of the mechanism Lee uses in his filmmaking is to create a character who is a sympathetic racist: “characters with whom mainstream audiences readily ally themselves but who embrace racist beliefs and commit racist acts. By self-consciously presenting white viewers with the fact that they may form positive allegiances with characters whose racist bigotry is revealed as the story unfolds, Lee provokes his viewers to consider a far more complex view of what it means to think of one's self as "white" and how that may affect one's overall sense of humanity”. In “BlacKkKlansman” however, Lee alters this technique and changes its purpose entirely, employing a Black character who embraces racist institutions but cannot be pinned as a “racist” due to his blackness. The effect of this is that white audiences are not made to self reflect, are spoon fed a very surface level understanding of racial tensions in the U.S both in the past and in the present, and are also assuaged of any responsibility which essentially gives a pass to white passivity. Lee is not the first to be accused of exploiting Black life to and for a white audience. Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem turned broadway show “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf”, also drew in a heavily white audience and received praise from mainstream audiences as well as Black female audiences. However Lee’s films, “BlacKkKlansman” included, in many ways are responses to Shange and the Black womanist representation of Blackness - something Lee has found himself at odds with. Shange and other Black female artists such as Alice Walker depict the intersections of race and gender, and how collective Black advancement is usually achieved on the backs and at the expense and suffering of Black women - often to be met with backlash from Black men. Lee saw this perspective of the Black female experience as a direct attack on Black men, responding: “...the quickest way for a black playwright, novelist or poet to get published had been to say that black men are shit. If you say that, then you are definitely going to get media, your book published, your play done… that’s why they put Alice Walker out there. That’s why she won the Pulitzer Prize. That’s why Hollywood leapt the pond to seize this book and had it made.” Lee sees Black women writing about their specific struggles as false narratives created for the sole purpose of exploiting Black men for mainstream acclaim. In “BlacKkKlansman” Lee illustrates Black women using Patrice, who is a two-dimensional composite character who recites dogmatic Black Panther doctrine, only to end up eating her words and dating a member of the institution who she so strongly stands against. To this end, Lee refuses to hold Black men accountable for their own actions and denies real exploration of Black women, all for the sake of allowing audiences to better identify with Stallworth. It should be noted however, that Shange, Lee and Walkers’ work all exist within a context where there is a shortage of Black stories and experiences in mainstream American art, and are often considered to be representative experiences instead of singular interpretations of the larger Black American experience.As pointed out by Erik Nielsen in his article “White Surveillance of Black Art”, Black art is defined as being by and most notably, for Black people. Black art, even if it is made in direct opposition of white racism, is inevitably addressing a white audience and white consumption due to the centrality of whiteness in the oppression of Blackness. Though “BlacKkKlansman” was created by Black people and draws from Black themes and styles like Blaxploitation, the film does not classify as Black art because of its intention and audience. In catering to a white audience, the question of what the film really accomplishes in comparing 1970s racial tensions to contemporary ones remains. Apart from the very surface level lesson that racism and White supremacy still exists, the film fails to paint an accurate picture of why and how racism still operates, and most importantly who it affects the most. In an effort to appeal to the liberal mainstream through the films strong use of racial epithets and militant Black nationalism, the film feigns traditional Black radicalism; while in reality it subverts the very point of Black art, which is to empower Blackness - not to teach and comfort white liberals.“BlacKkKlansman” checks off a number of boxes as a historical period piece. On the one hand, the film is based off the lived experience of Stallworth and employs the visual and stylistic themes in order to capture Stallworth’s memory of the 1970s. On the other hand, the film embellishes details and adds to Stallworth’s reality through the creation of composite characters. This was not done to recreate Stallworth’s reality, it was done to help bring across the films interpretation of past race relations and how it pertains to today. In pushing the comparison of white supremacy of the 20th century to the alt-right and Trump, “BlacKkKlansman” is highlighting the persistence of the Klu Klux Klan as the root of racism and extremism in the United States. While making this point clear, “BlacKkKlansman” makes the supposed mistake that many historians fault film as a means to convey history with - the film only offers a singular analysis of the past, relying on an uninformed audience to present it’s argument. The film’s use of clips from “The Birth of a Nation” and found footage from the Charlottesville attack create a streamlined, linear history of racism and violence against Black Americans. The film’s analysis of race relations of the 1970s, and in turn, its analysis of present day race relations lack an understanding the deeper, historical roots of structural racism in the form of institutions. Stallworth as a police officer and a believer in aspects of Black radicalism is an oxymoron, one that is not explored. The calculated end effect of these particular omissions is to create a sense of safety for the intended white audience. One in which they could ease themselves of guilt and responsibility while simultaneously having their eyes opened to the overt racism of the alt-right, which they could not see without the hand holding the film provides.BibliographyAgyepong, Tera. "In the Belly of the Beast: Black Policemen Combat Police Brutality in Chicago, 1968–1983." The Journal of African American History 98, no. 2 (2013): 253-76.Flory, Dan. "Spike Lee and the Sympathetic Racist." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 67-79. Frank, Rebecca Morgan. "Commentary: A Collective Appetite: Reception and the White Gaze from Shange to Sapphire." Black Camera 4, no. 1 (2012): 215-19. Herlihy, David. “Am I a Camera? Other Reflections on Films and History”The American Historical Review, Vol. 93, no. 5 (Dec., 1988): 1186-1192.Linscott, Charles “Chip” P. “Introduction: #BlackLivesMatter and the Mediatic Lives of a Movement” Black Camera , Vol. 8, No. 2 (Spring 2017): 75-80.Mims, Sergio Alejandro. "A New Life: Independent Black Filmmaking during the 1980's." Black Camera 5, no. 1 (1990), 4-6.Nielson, Erik. "White Surveillance of the Black Arts." African American Review 47, no. 1 (2014): 161-77. BibliographyRosenstone, Robert A. “History in Images/History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film” The American Historical Review, Vol. 93, No. 5 (Dec., 1988): 1173-1185.Simmonds, Felly Nkweto. ""She's Gotta Have It": The Representation of Black Female Sexuality on Film." Feminist Review, no. 29 (1988): 10-22.Tuck, Stephen. "'We Are Taking up Where the Movement of the 1960s Left Off': The Proliferation and Power of African American Protest during the 1970s." Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 4 (2008): 637-54. ................
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