As Black Lives Matter protests continue across America and the rest of the world, Spike Lee has told The Big Issue that “we can’t go back to what was”.
The Oscar-winning film director said: “When they find a vaccine, it has to be a whole new agenda. These vast differences between the haves and have nots, these humongous gaps, have to be closed.”
For four decades Spike Lee’s films have fearlessly addressed big issues. Early indies She’s Gotta Have It, Jungle Fever and Crooklyn showcased a cinematic maverick telling untold stories of black America, Malcolm X resurrected a civil rights icon, 25th Hour defined post-9/11 loss and anxiety, Chi-Raq took aim at gun culture (in rhyming couplets), BlacKkKlansman taught us to infiltrate hate, winning Lee an Oscar in 2019.
His latest joint, Da 5 Bloods, released this week on Netflix, is about the Vietnam War but telling of our incendiary times. Four African-American bloods – a term of camaraderie used by black soldiers – return to Vietnam to exhume and repatriate the remains of their former commander (and dig up gold they buried in the jungle).
Spike Lee was born in 1957. The war in Vietnam and civil rights battles at home coincided with his formative years.
He said: “I was young enough not to be drafted. But I was old enough to think, what the hell is going on? Many people forget the Vietnam War was the first war that was televised into American homes. It had a great impact. This was something we talked about at dinner. I’m seeing Muhammad Ali say, ‘No Vietcong ever called me nigger,’ I’m seeing John Carlos and Tommie Smith with their raised black fists.”
