In Zimbabwe, when the TV turned on at 6pm and the newscaster read the news, they spoke of President Robert Mugabe. Blackness in the highest echelons of political office only became a myth when I returned to Britain. Since childhood, I have understood that seeing a black person as the leader of a country in the western world could only be realised in America. Wanna know even as a child I knew? The movies. Yes. Don’t laugh. Movies have long prophesied the coming of what would be. There have obviously been British Prime Ministers in film but they weren’t the films I was watching as a child and they definitely weren’t black.
Read moreChi-Raq & Spike Lee's Accidental Misogynoir
Spike Lee is to Woke what Wiley is to Grime; The Godfather. What is “woke”? Well, it can be used as a noun or an adjective. To be woke is to be conscious or enlightened specifically about socio-political current affairs and history. At the end of School Daze [1988] Spike Lee has Morpheus shouting “Wake-Up!” as a call to action not only for the other characters, but for the audience as well. Throughout his films and documentaries Lee’s desire to encourage viewers to be conscious of the effects of colonialism, racism, segregation and police brutality, to name a few of society’s ills, have been both artistic and effective. Chi-raq is no different. It is a beautiful, powerful, heart breaking retelling of Lysistrata, the Greek satire by Aristophanes. In all his hyperconsciousness, one subject slipped past him in creating Chi-Raq- misogynoir.
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