Spike Lee's Chi-raq

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.

just your typical wednesday...

Wednesday 25 November: 81 killed
Mosul: 28 children killed in French air strike; 11 executed.
Badush: 25 executed.
Baghdad: 11 by IEDs, gunfire; 2 bodies.
Madain: 4 by car bomb.

Murder rates have gone down in Chicago over the past 2 decades but it's misleading in two ways: first that the projects were knocked down and people moved often to the inner ring suburbs; then a police policy of containment meant that while the rates decreased in most Chicago neighborhoods in many neighborhoods they actually increased dramatically. The inequality of violence as they call it increased dramatically so some neighborhoods are worse than they've ever been

Not sure that this context is explained in the film, but it's important regardless

the figures colbert used for chicago were military deaths, IIRC

was a little amused to see during the trailers before creed that spike's cousin has a movie about chicago violence coming out also.

Barbershop 3?

yup

Seen a lot of reviews and reactions to this one that run along the lines of "even bad Spike Lee is better than no Spike Lee," which seem to hinge on the assumption that Lee has been out of commission since "Inside Man" and not constantly churning out movies that few saw or liked. The guy has massive personality and talent, and has made a handful of my favorite films or documentaries, but like my Prince comparison upthread, it unfortunately comes down to problems of quantity and quality control.

Red Hook Summer and Da Sweet Blood of Jesus both had their fans; I didn't see either, and most of you probably didn't either.

Exactly. And did anyone like Oldboy or ... whatever that WWII movie was?

Oldboy was terrible. Hope he made some good cash doing it though.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus was surprisingly good, and seems to be quite similar to Chi-raq, actually. Looking forward to seeing that one.