![]() ![]() It sounds like they used to be friends and tried to pledge together and only Julian made it so it ended their friendship. He’s in Furious Styles mode as Half Pint’s older cousin and serious dude on campus who has Mandela (and Dreamgirls?) posters in his dorm room and leads his friends (including Kadeem Hardison in a Public Enemy t-shirt) in campus protests. Meanwhile there’s Dap (Laurence Fishburne, The Man Who Would Be Morpheus, But Was Already Cowboy Curtis). Giancarlo Esposito, The Man Who Would Be Buggin’ Out, plays the sadistic Big Brother All-might-TEE!, aka Julian. Lee plays Half Pint, the smallest and least likely candidate. Their female counterparts, the Gamma Rays, see them and meow lustily, which seems biologically questionable in my opinion. ![]() The potentials wear black and silver padded outfits like Janet Jackson backup dancers, plus bald heads, goggles, some face paint, collars and leashes. I’m assuming, but don’t really know, that some of this is colorfully exaggerated. It’s a movie full of chants, step routines, FULL METAL JACKET style degradation and men acting as dogs, crawling on all fours. Then he throws us into the weird hazing rituals of the Gamma Pi Gamma fraternity. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, Ella Fitzgerald, Jackie Robinson, etc., all set to the Morehouse College Glee Club singing the Negro spiritual “I’m Building Me a Home.” The biggest influence of SCHOOL DAZE is probly on HOUSE PARTY 2, which continues the theme of college kids being confused about how stridently political they should be while preparing for a themed dance, and was co-written by SCHOOL DAZE cast member Rusty Cundieff.įor the most part it’s a fun movie, a comedy, but man, you know you’re dealing with Spike Lee when the fraternity movie opens with a photo montage tracing African American life from slaveships to Frederick Douglass, Booker T. And I haven’t researched this, but I don’t know of an earlier movie about black college students – not that this has become a subgenre or anything. from Morehouse College) also wants to shine some cinematic light on the tradition of historically black colleges. Also it’s about a conflict between the older, establishment generation running the college and the idealistic young militants about the morality of investing in South Africa.īasically, the movie uses the college as a microcosm of the black community as a whole, though obviously Lee (who got a B.A. And it’s about politically-minded young people feuding with frat guys, working class townies hating the seemingly-better-off college kids, the college kids sometimes being too entitled or uncaring to handle the situation well, all things that other races can relate to in some sense. On the other hand I guess its treatment of fraternities is probly pretty universal (I have no idea, not having any contact with the Greek system). No, SCHOOL DAZE is striking because it’s a mainstream studio movie with its primary focus on specifically black issues: hatred between light and dark skin, “good hair” and “bad hair,” jheri curls and otherwise. And joint #2, just like joint #1, I’m pretty sure doesn’t show a single white person in it. Of course that’s not even a complete description of the content of those two movies, let alone applicable to most of his filmography. Since DO THE RIGHT THING and MALCOLM X were Lee’s most culturally recognized movies, certain white people pigeonholed him as a guy who only makes movies about white people being racist. ![]() But in this context that’s kinda charming. It’s the first example of what I think is one of his weaknesses: his overreach in tackling too many things at once, creating an unfocused and overstuffed narrative. ![]() He even has a full-on song and dance number. Here’s 30 year old Spike having access to the studio’s resources for the first time – he goes from a few actors in apartments in black and white to a huge cast on a college campus. But man, looking back at it now I love its youthful exuberance. SCHOOL DAZE is Spike Lee’s sophomore jointational work, and was never one of my favorites from him. ![]()
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