On the Conscience of America

On the Conscience of America

The story behind

Spike Lee and his documentary

"4 Little Girls"

Liz Farmer

Documentary Filmmaking

Prof. Gene Weis

May 1, 2002

In 1986, Spike Lee burst on the scene with his hit movie She's Gotta Have It. Since then, Lee has averaged a relentless production of nearly one film per year, in both fiction and non-fiction form. Lee is known for his resolve to stay true to his style and vision--no matter how controversial the results may be. Whether draped in praise or controversy, Spike Lee is arguably one of the most influential filmmakers of the twentieth century.

Lee's Georgia birth certificate reads his full name as Shelton Jackson Lee, born on March 20, 1957--the eve of the civil rights era. Although born in Atlanta, Lee grew up in Brooklyn, New York, an area that figures largely in his work as a filmmaker. Spike's parents raised their uncomfortably middle-class family of five in an all-white Brooklyn neighborhood, an environment that undoubtedly had an effect on his later films. Lee's awareness of his African American identity was established at an early age. His mother, Jacquelyn, instilled in her children a schoolteacher's enthusiasm for black art and literature. He was made familiar with classic artists such as Langston Hughes and Claude McKay and revolutionaries like Marcus Garvey. His father Bill, an accomplished jazz musician, introduced him to African American jazz and folk legends like Miles Davis and Odetta, respectively. Bill is also a composer, and has scored the music to a number of his films. As a result, Spike and his siblings were raised in a very creative environment. Lee recalls being made to see Broadway plays such as The King and I, and how that affected him later on in life. "Now I could see that exposure was very important," Lee articulated in a 1996 speech, "even though I didn't know that that was what I wanted to do, even though I didn't want to see those plays, even though I did not want to see my father play jazz. Now I see that if my parents didn't insist on it, even with me kicking and screaming, I'd have not become a filmmaker." (Lee)

By the time he was old enough to attend school, the already independent Lee had earned the nickname his mother had given him as an infant, Spike --an allusion to his toughness. When he and his siblings were offered the option of attending the predominantly white private school where his mother taught, Lee opted instead to go the public route, where he would be assured of the companionship of black peers. This choice resulted in a different learning environment between the Lee siblings. While Spike's sister Joie was channeled into predominantly white colleges, Spike chose to go to his father and grandfather's all-black alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta.

It was at Morehouse that Lee found his calling. He had grown up an avid sports fan and had a lifelong dream of becoming a second baseman for the New York Mets. However, as Lee wryly puts it, "genetics conspired against that dream happening." (Lee) He chose to major in mass communications because it encompassed the arts, specifically film--a side interest of his. Lee became serious about pursuing film as a career during the year of 1977. Following the unexpected death of his mother, Lee's friends tried to cheer him with frequent trips to the movies. He quickly became a fan of directors Bernardo Bertolucci, Martin Scorsese, and Akira Kurosawa. But it wasn't until he had seen Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter that Lee knew what he was going to spend his life doing. Spike wanted to be a creator of his own kind of art form. He wanted to make films that would capture the black experience, and he was willing to do so by whatever means necessary. That summer, which was the summer of the Son of Sam and the New York City blackouts, Lee could not find a job. Instead, he bought a Super 8 camera and shoot scenes he saw around the city. It was the first summer of disco, and it was common to find people out on the streets at a block party, dancing to the hustle or other songs. The film finished as a highlight film of Blacks and Puerto Ricans looting and dancing. Lee titled his film Last Hustle in Brooklyn, and showed it to his college class. He was inspired by the favorable response he received and wanted to learn more about the art of making films. Upon graduating Moorehouse, he decided pursued his passion at New York University, where he enrolled in the Tisch School of Arts graduate film program.

At Tisch, Lee was one of the few African-American students. He spent the next three years making films, either his own or helping out his classmates with theirs. Because of the predominantly white environment, Lee felt he had to make his work stand out. "You ask any successful Black person," Le relates in an interview, "They all know when they embark on what they're doing they can't be as good as the white person--they have to be ten times better. It's not fair, but that's just the way it is." (Breskin, 161) Lee quickly became notorious among his professors when he produced ten minute short entitled The Answer as his first-year project. In his film, a black screenwriter is assigned to remake D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and contained negative references alluding to Griffith's stereotypical portrayals of Blacks. Despite the backlash he received, Lee confidently went on to produce a 45-minute film for his senior thesis titled Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads. His acclaimed project garnered him the 1983 Student Academy Award.

Lee graduated from film school that year, and proceeded to write the script (The Messenger) for his first feature film idea. In order to maintain creative control, Lee wanted to film his feature independently and found a producer to finance his project. However, the funding never materialized, and Lee had to abort the film--letting down a number of actors and crew members that had promised to work for Lee. Yet, the experience was not a complete failure for Lee. He learned a valuable lesson about what it takes to get a real film script produced. "In retrospect," Lee says, "I committed several key errors all first-time filmmakers do. They try to be over ambitious, try to do stuff that's beyond they're means--that