I love Spike Lee, I really do. He forces people to take a look at social situations as more than culture and things people do. He's more along the lines of why do we do what we do? His films have a distinct black voice, but provides angles from other ethnicities as well, I love that about him. He's not particularly one-sided about anything. I've always heard about this movie growing up, but never have I seen it. Well, BET decided it was time I should and showed it last Friday. I liked the way it was directed, but something about the film puzzles me. They went through all that without ever really having a yen for each other? He destroyed his marriage over a curiosity? I guess that's life, but it still unnerves me and doesn't flow with the film. Added to that, Flipper is/was staunchly pro-black, but I guess that's to show that even someone like him could dip to the other side. It was obviously a social issue of the early 90's and why successful black men decide it's time to trade up when they've made it. Apparently they think it's ok if they have enough money and that the world has changed enough that people will allow it. Personally, nothing has changed in some 40 odd years for a black men to think America's ok with him dating a white woman. Kobe's case has proved that and so did the scene where they were playing around and wrestling and someone called the cops on him cuz they thought he was raping her. Black men need to understand that the history of romantic race relations is this: White women were put on a pedestal as the epitome of beauty, desire, and purity. Black people were always the antithesis of that, but white men could jump back and forth as they pleased with no detriment to their character. Even in 2004, that mentality has a hard time going away. I liked that Flipper's father in the movie expounded upon that. Things haven't changed that much and Spike took that and ran with it to show it visually. The acting was very good for this film, because they didn't necessarily have to be, but they were great. The movie was clear, the music was cleverly applied in the right places. The scene with the women arguing about what it does to them to see black men with white women was brilliant. It seems quasi-feminist at the same time. It just has every approach and I love it. Great movie!
