On Thursday, January 3, 2002, Pat wrote:

Subject: Spike Lee

The other evening Arnold informed me that you and he were watching a Spike Lee movie, and he stated that you really enjoyed it. I have seen several Lee movies; however I couldn't remember their names, so I went to the internet for a memory jog and came across transcripts of a speech Lee delivered in San Francisco in 1996: The Demystification of Spike Lee. Found some interesting information: Lee claimed he didn't start watching movies at an extremely early age, he went with his friends to Saturday matinees and sat through the movies six times while consuming all of the sodas and popcorn that could possibly be stored in a growing boy.

His father was a "bassoonist and his parents exposed him, at an early age, to the arts".

When he decided on a career in filmaking he checked to see which of the leading film schools in the US would accept him and in this order "USC, UCLA and NYU." USC and UCLA required outrageously high GRE scores, Lee stated that he had always and still does find entrance exams to be extremely "culturally biased"and NYU only required that prospective students submit a creative portfolio. If he had been denied an education in filmaking the world would have been denied some very creative properties.

lnp, Patricia

On Thursday, January 3, 2002, jeanne responded:

Checked out the Demystification of Spike Lee I didn't find the part about USC, UCLA, and NYU, but I did come across this passage in their discussion of Get on the Bus:

"Spike Lee (SL): A lot of times I feel my job is just beginning after the film is done, because you have to get out there and promote it. A lot of the actors and I did everything we were asked to promote [for Get on the Bus]. The African-American audience for the most part was unresponsive.

"Erich Leon Harris (ELH): Was it apathy?

"SL: That's a very complex question, but I think apathy has a lot to do with it. I was speaking to Branford Marsalis about this the other day, and he said that black folks think they know what they like, but they only like what they know.

"ELH: So if you try to do something different--

"SL: They don't want to hear it. And why people thought this was a documentary, I still don't understand. We took care to make sure with the TV commercials and radio spots that this was an entertaining picture and not some diatribe about "Let's uplift the black man!" and all of that kind of stuff. You have to look at the numbers. We've been out since October 16th, we've yet to crack $6 million. Set It Off is going to make $30 or $35 million. It's disturbing because studio heads are looking at these numbers, and the next time a black filmmaker tries to make a film with any substance, they'll say, "Well, the last time somebody tried a film like that was Get On The Bus, and nobody came. But you know, they sure did come to see Set It Off, so we've got to have more shoot 'em ups, more violent pieces." And those are the films that they'll continue to make. That's the sad part. But while all this is happening, black people will still be crying, "Oh, they never do us right in Hollywood, and we get hit with the same stereotypes again and again. Our image is not put on the screen." If you want something, you gotta bring something. It's as simple as that."
You'll find this about three-fourths of the way down the file.

I'd like to look at that discussion in terms of the interdependence of the several consciousness of self perspectives I see embodied here.

• First, there's the practical self that Spike Lee acknowledges in the comparison of USC, UCLA, and NYU admission policies. He assessed his strengths and went for the school that weighted those strengths most heavily. For me, that suggests that Spike Lee had a strong sense of self, seen through his own eyes, but that he had also a strong sense of the "Other's" perception of his image. The Other's perception did affect who he was. It limited certain options. But he did not depend on the Other for his vision of self.

  I think Ernest Gaines said this best in Three Men, in which he remarks that the white man, the Other, needs the black man to define himself. He means, I think, by that that the Other finds it easier to define himself as being "not a black man" instead of struggling to know who he is as a "white man."

• There's the self that Spike Lee has enormous confidence in. The creative self, that makes the film he can't get out of his head. I suspect that this self comes also from what I would call the "real consciousness," the one that refuses to not be heard.

• And then there's the self that Spike Lee knows as a film maker, the one who does whatever is needed to get his film out, who raises the funds he will need to that end. I suspect that that self is a mixture of the creative self who will not be suppressed, and the learned self who understands the dominant discourse and knows how to "play the game."

All these facets of character are real, and they are interdependent. Perhaps we should call this the sophistication of the "me" generation. We did come to know ourselves, to be less afraid of facing ourselves, of giving up denial. And that does empower us. But in the process, we are also forced to recognize that we do not CONTROL, as once the empire thought it could, as once those with the power tried to. See also Serena Thomas' questioning at More than Just One Consciousness.

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