Spike Lee's Chi-raq

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?

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?

― balls, Thursday, November 26, 2015 11:24 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

both!

Man, I loved the Baseball Furies.

My concerns with this film, as such, have everything to do with Spike Lee, whose hit to miss ratio is vast and epic. Had he made a documentary I'd be as excited as anything. But another Spike Lee Joint? Nah, seems smug and pointless. The last thing Chicago needs is less truth and more Truth. This city is so messed up and going through so many horrible things right now that metaphors and reimaginings do nobody any favors.

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

― I don't have the time or energy to make a counterargument (stevie), Thursday, 26 November 2015 17:44 (54 minutes ago) Permalink

No. Back then chicago's rep was more about shadiness and corruption, cf the obsession over tony rezko, or his supposed political radicalism, via Jeremiah wright and Bill Ayers. Look I watched this stuff happen firsthand, the handwringing over Chicago violence came hand in hand w the spotlight drawn by the music, ppl forget that by summer 2012 fucking gwenyth Paltrow was telling interviewers she was listening to drill music

Like obviously the facts themselves predate it--the interrupters came out in 2011--but that wasnt getting the same national attention. 2012-2013-2014 there were multiple documentaries, big prime time news specials, the media spotlight was extra heavy to the point that Obama brought up Chicago violence in his reelection speech-- and all of them referenced the music, this isn't a reach

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/26/spike-lee-female-students-should-go-on-sex-strike-to-combat-campus?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Close+up+new+-+2+edittable+regions&utm_term=140004&subid=40319&CMP=ema_1046

Spike Lee: female students should go on sex strike to combat campus rape/

i dont know what tone he said this in, but im not as optimistic as spike about this idea.

Colbert cited statistics that showed that since 2001 more Americans had died in Chicago than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

can this really be true?

easily

lot more americans in chicago than iraq or afghanistan, obviously

Also is that people dying from violence or just deaths in general?

homicide in chicago:

2001: 667[48]
2002: 656[48]
2003: 601[48]
2004: 453[48]
2005: 451[48]
2006: 471[48]
2007: 448[48]
2008: 513[48]
2009: 459[48]
2010: 436[48]
2011: 435[48]
2012: 516[49]
2013: 441[18]
2014: 432[18]

certainly nowhere near the amount of people FROM iraq and afghanistan who have been murdered. but we don't count them here.