Spike Lee's Chi-raq

"was Fury Road not hyperstylized?"

there was a lot of kneejerk hatred of that movie!!

five stars in the guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/25/chi-raq-review-spike-lees-urgent-angry-and-very-sexy-midlife-masterpiece

2.5 stars in the tribune;

reader gives it a soft pan: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/spike-lee-chi-raq-rahm-emanuel-will-burns/Content?oid=20202638

i dont totally get why chicagoans might be so worried about this one movie. not like people dont know whats going on in the city (at least people who read broadsheets etc). and then theres guys like chief keef, etc, who have 'drawn attention' to the violence in the city. never mind that common did a whole album about it. i want to see it. spike is underrated as a great stylist. and i doubt he would be out to exploit gang violence. this might be a kind of companion piece with clockers.

― StillAdvance, Wednesday, November 25, 2015 6:36 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha how come a guy from outside chicago cant 'draw attention' to chicago violence when chicagoans have drawn attention to it already? how about because chicagoans have drawn attention to it already? 'drawing attention' only means something to a point, then it just becomes this frozen trope about chicago violence. in the long view, sociology has 'drawn attention' to chicago violence for a hundred years but nothing's changed in that time

so lemme get this straight - only people who are from the communities they wanna talk about have any business at all talking about at all in any way about those communities under any circumstances

hmm, d-40, hmmmm

When did I say that?

I just think the notion that Chicagoans should obsequiously appreciate spike for "drawing attention" to the problems there is facile--like StillAdvance said, chief keef did that three years ago, the question now is what he does w that and I don't think it's wrong for Chicagoans to be wary!

i guess it depends if spike is merely 'drawing attention' to it, or saying something more than 'hey theres this pretty tragic wave of violence going on in chicago right now guys', which i imagine he is, cos this doesnt look like a typical 'message'/'bad things that are happening in american inner cities!' type of movie. im sure chicagoans have a right to be wary, but there have been other films/docus on it too, like the interrupters, so its not like there havent been other screen representations of it already.

There is no way Chicago ends up liking this movie. The rest of the world will probably actually learn a lot because of it, though. I suspect if you're in Chicago it's very easy to count up various noble and probably better efforts to raise awareness, but this is a Spike Lee Joint, this is going to be seen by a shitload of people who haven't had exposure to this yet.

idk, once chief keef has addressed something you've probably reached maximum media saturation

crooklyn is such a wonderful movie. i think it must be my fave of his. this one looks pretty bad. if he did a movie called illadelph about the life of cool c and steady b i would totally go see that.

wait, you guys heard that terrible song from this movie, right?

this terrible one:

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/this-terrible-new-song-from-spike-lees-chi-raq-cant-pos-1741795557

haha wow what the oh my god that is horrendous

man if you told me a decade ago "don't worry, the idea of music will be destroyed in 2015, by a man named Kevon Carter" I would look at you like you were talking nonsense, but here we are!

There is no way Chicago ends up liking this movie. The rest of the world will probably actually learn a lot because of it, though. I suspect if you're in Chicago it's very easy to count up various noble and probably better efforts to raise awareness, but this is a Spike Lee Joint, this is going to be seen by a shitload of people who haven't had exposure to this yet.

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, November 25, 2015 7:10 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's not a doc tho, it's extremely fanciful...like its reaching for something more universal and just using the chiraq mythos as like a setting

And contra balls Chicago has been synonymous w "black on black crime" in the national media basically since keef blew up three years ago, moreso than other cities w/ the exact same issues

Like is there any human in the western world right now that DOESNT associate Chicago w violence ?

i don't. windy. oprah. that's about it.

and big fat pizza pies.

hot dogs with stuff

da bears

jimmy butler

i have heard tales about the infamous plastic crimewave syndicate in chicago...or "The 'Cago" as the natives call it.

from wbez in chicago it's this american life i'm ira glass each week we bring you little stories or some shit

deej is right though, before chief keef nobody had even heard of chicago and now that chief keef has weighed in there is nothing more that could be said about chicago

i went there once. ate a big fat pizza. watched barney kessel and herb ellis play two sets at rick's cafe. it was chill.

IRL Spike Lee movie (feat. Brian Dennehey & Giancarlo Esposito):

https://twitter.com/BauerJournalism/status/669684294164594688

Exciting to watch balls argue w things no one says, what is this 12 years on

Every conservative politician in America over the past three years used Chicago as a byword for black on black crime cmon

This isn't even the first movie CALLED chiraq made in the past three years

I'm not even saying the movie is bad just that "but it's drawing attention to these problems" is not just a low bar but a completely redundant one

tell us what you didn't like about the movie, deej

I haven't seen the film yet! And I was responding to other people who also have not yet seen the film but were responding to other people's wariness about seeing the film.

seems like the best thing to do would be to see the movie

does this speak at all to how people's attitudes towards ~art~ have changed in the, what, 25 years since do the right thing came out? or is it just a he's-not-from-round-here sentiment?

I mean no one to me knowledge says or said 'it's annoying that this film exists because, you know, we already know about inner city racial tension'

*my

looks awesome

i'm curious how the reaction to this film compares to the reaction to 'the warriors'--another film that took the complex real-life problem of gang violence and turned it in a hyper-stylized retelling of a Classical narrative (well, one is a comedy, the other an epic).

from today's perspective it's almost impossible to think of 'The warriors' as 'topical' in any real sense. it seems to exist in a world of its own. i doubt that lee's film will be so thoroughly abstract (for worse and definitely for better, lee has never had an interest in that kind of discipline).

distance also tends to dilute outrage in ways that aren't entirely predictable rational. whenever i see or hear about a holocaust melodrama, i always get an icky feeling, like it's necessarily exploitative and tacky, whatever the approach. but i don't have the same reaction to films about wars of antiquity, nor am i always repulsed from true-crime narratives.

i guess what i'm saying is that it's interesting that some seem to object to lee's film simply for existing -- for taking a real-life tragedy and making it into art, or at least art that doesn't stay within the narrow bounds of a sympathetic 'regretful' humanism.

see the movie

― k3vin k., Wednesday, November 25, 2015 8:45 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Without having seen the film, I'm comfortable defending people who are wary about the movie for being wary about it based on the trailer

"Distance also tends to dilute outrage"

lol yes whereas comfortable distance makes people what, more rational?

When an out-of-towner comes to town and brings out-of-towers to tell the story of your town, it's fair enough to be wary.

lol yes whereas comfortable distance makes people what, more rational?

i'm not saying outrage is irrational! it is often very rational!

i mean folks living in parts of chicago have every right to be outraged about the violence in their communities, and very possibly about lee's treatment of that violence.

but people were outraged by 'the warriors' too (you can read all about in the newspapers)... but if you watch that film today, the topical associations largely seem to fall away, and you're left with strange, hyperstylized work of art that seems to belong to no time.

a comment from the guardian that i think is worth pasting -

"The reviewer misses one of the main problems with the term "Chiraq". The only way one can even begin to compare homicides in Chicago to deaths in Iraq is to completely ignore every single civilian casualty in Iraq (as well as the coalition and Iraqi army deaths). Most months as many civilians are killed in Baghdad as are killed in Chicago in a bad year. Anything that helps Americans continue to ignore how much we've screwed up Iraq for the average Iraqi is not a good thing."

right, i noticed that -- lee compares the deaths of american soldiers in iraq to the number of homicides in chicago. but by some measures hundreds of thousands of iraqis were killed in the course of the american occupation. much of iraq (not to mention syria) is experiencing a human catastrophe of the likes we haven't seen in this country in 150 years.

(i know this will sound like trolling, but what also came to mind here are some of the more hyperbolic descriptions of 'rape culture' in america which seems to suggest that we are experiencing some world-historical epidemic of sexual violence. although america does seem to have higher rates of sexual violence compared to other wealthy nations, there are places on earth that are much, much more dangerous for women--places where rape is something like an official instrument of war. this isn't to say that america doesn't have a very serious problem with sexual violence that needs to be remedied; just that rhetoric can sometimes obscure the degrees of crisis.)

that came out wrong; i don't mean to suggest that we should be 'ok' with a certain number of homicides per year, or the way that gun violence affects the poor and people of color disproportionately.

i guess i just agree with some of the folks in chicago who are concerned that the 'chiraq' label paints a image of pervasive lawlessness that hyperbolizes and caricatures life in many neighborhoods in chicago. (i still think it might be unwise to prejudge a film one hasn't seen...)

were ppl outraged that the warriors exploited real life gang violence or were ppl outraged that this movie that was obv gonna trigger riots (cf the ott concern over do the right thing in 1989) was getting released?

brings out-of-towners to tell the story of your town

hey, John Cusack plays a priest!

And contra balls Chicago has been synonymous w "black on black crime" in the national media basically since keef blew up three years ago, moreso than other cities w/ the exact same issues

hasn't it actually been a rw buzz-topic longer, like since a certain black chicago community worker became president?