June 21st
Okay. For whatever reason, after the disappointment of She’s Gotta Have It, I still wanted more. So I moved on to Spike Lee’s sophmore film School Daze. And it seems like he’s redeemed himself. As always, I had a lot of problems with this joint, and Spike’s own ever-presence in front of the camera was yet another test of my annoyance endurance. But, but, I can’t deny that Spike has created something wholely original here: a campus-set comedy that portrays “the black experience”. And I got to think about why his place in the film world is a very important one, despite being a rather flawed-storyteller. It’s the racial and political aspects of his stories. No one else tell these particular stories, stories about black people who aren’t hoodlums or drug addicts. Just regular people, but their points of views aren’t regular because of their skin colour. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the film. As an outsider, I can’t say I fully comprehend everything in the movie, the ending was especially puzzling. But I really enjoyed the first musical number (about straight hair vs frizzy hair), I like the invention of these Gammites seen below. But my favourite part was probably the Gamma Phi Gamma fraternity initiation sequence, sadly I can’t find a video of it. The film could have been a lot better, in fact, the same can be said about most of his films, if he just had a co-writer/editor who could give the story a bit more structural/pacing perspective and supervised his over self-indulgence. But, I guess a Spike Lee joint is a Spike Lee joint.