Wearing orange hi-top tennis shoes, a hoodie and a wooden peace symbol necklace, Spike Lee looked like a grownup version of his “Mookie” character from “Do The Right Thing” when he took the stage at Webster University’s Loretto-Hilton Performance Center on Monday night.
Dubbed “An Evening with Spike Lee,” the talk was broken into two segments – a conversation with theatre professor Gad Guterman and an audience Q&A. Lee was everything one would expect him to be: a blunt open book.
He talked about his latest film project “Chiraq,” street gun violence and the serendipitous way he stumbled into his passion.
Of “Chiraq,” Guterman said, “The mayor of Chicago said he hoped the movie prompts some serious and much needed conversation about gun violence.”
“Where did he say that?” Lee interrupted. “All he told me to my face was the title was going to hurt tourism and economic development.”
Guterman attempted to assure Lee that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was excited about the film.
“I don’t think so,” Spike said.
“It’s a war zone in Chicago right now. We started shooting ‘Chiraq’ this past June 1 and wrapped on July 9 – during that time 331 people got wounded and 65 people got murdered. It’s all young black men killing young black men.”
The premise of the film comes from the ancient Greek play “Lysistrata” by Aristophanes. Lee remixes the 411 B.C. play, where women withheld sex to end the senseless violence of war, for present-day audiences.
“The goal of this film is really to save lives,” Lee said. “We have to be as outraged when we kill ourselves as when the police kill us. We hope that with ‘Chiraq’ we will compel these young brothers to think before they pull the trigger.”
Spirit of the camera
Being on a college campus, Lee spoke of his own days as an undergraduate at the historically black Morehouse College. “My first two years, I was wandering – floundering, even,” Lee said. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”
The summer after his sophomore year, Lee dropped in on a neighborhood friend in New York. “We were in her living room, and I said, ‘What’s in the box?’” Lee recalled. “She said, ‘That’s a camera. You can have it. I’m going to be a doctor. I don’t need it.’”
He took the “Super 8” and went to work. With it he was able to capture the great blackout in 1977, the first summer of Disco and reaction to The Son of Sam killings.
He spent the next semester at Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University), assembling a film because Morehouse didn’t have a Mass Communications Department at the time. Upon graduation from Morehouse, Lee studied at New York University’s film school and has gone on to make 35 films and will receive an honorary Academy Award next year.
“That day, in that moment, the Spirit told me to go see her,” Lee said about being gifted the camera. “I’ll go to my grave knowing that was supposed to happen.”
‘Self-inflicted genocide’
During the Q&A, Lee challenged the idea that violence is solely a symptom of systemic racism and oppression.
“I understand that the system is set up for young black men not to succeed. I understand that with the privatized prisons, young black men are the new crop. I understand that half of young black men don’t graduate high school. I understand that there are more black men incarcerated than enrolled in colleges or universities. I understand that we have many times where cops have killed young black men simply because they are black,” Lee said.
“But if you do your research on what’s happening in Chicago, it’s self-inflicted genocide.”
He detailed his experiences in Chicago during his six weeks of filming.
“You ask a young kid what he wants to be when he grows up, and he says, ‘Alive,’” Lee said. “There’s no value of life. They don’t care that they’ll only live to 17 years old. And if they don’t care about their life, then they don’t care about anyone else’s life.”
Lee said there is a disintegrated code of honor among gangs that has given way to even more senseless deaths.
“If you killed a kid back in the day, if you didn’t turn yourself in, you got killed,” Lee said. “Now all bets are off. If the person they want to kill is in a crowd of 50, they just spray the group.”
A woman asked Lee to speak about the unrest in Ferguson and what young people could do to incite positive change. Lee asked Michael Brown Sr. – father of Michael Brown Jr. – to respond on his behalf.
“You just have to stay positive,” Brown said. “If you have your mind made up on doing something bigger and better – and you’re with the right people to help you push forward – that’s all you need.”
