Football games, rallies, parties, demonstrations, parades, fraternities and sororities; these are all the markers of college life. School Daze, written, produced, and directed by Spike Lee, showed all of that as done on a Black college campus.
School Daze addresses some very sensitive issues pertaining to African-Americans/Black-Americans (that's one of the issues). It's a conscious movie or, to use a '10's term, it's a woke movie. This is an early Spike Lee flick with the peculiarities of a Spike Lee flick.
One of the main issues elucidated in the movie was that of the term African-American vis-a-vis Black. The term wasn't at issue so much as the Africanness of Black-Americans. One side stressed the importance of Black people connecting with their African roots and reclaiming their African heritage. The opposing side of that point is that Black people have no real connection to Africa besides skin color and physical attributes. Both sides have compelling arguments and I would say both sides are right and I appreciated it being brought up on film.
Another issue which plagues African-Americans is the issue of "good" hair versus natural hair. The term "bad" hair is never used but it is directly implied when calling straighter finer hair "good" hair. This hang up afflicts women more than men for obvious reasons and Spike Lee had two groups of women face off in the movie to highlight the beef. Unfortunately, those with "good" hair sank to the level of calling the darker natural haired women "jigaboos." In my book that term is only second to the N-word in despicableness. Unlike the first issue, this matter has a right and wrong.
Spike also brought up light-skinned versus dark-skinned. Again, another highly divisive and highly sensitive issue. And again I think it also has a right and wrong.
One of the biggest issues, which was a central theme, was that of fraternity pledges versus non-pledges. I think it was used, at times, symbolically to represent the internal strifes between African-Americans (conscious v. sleep, dark v. light, "good" hair v. natural hair, African v. Black), but at other times it seemed to be simply frat life v. non-frat life. The pledges were depicted as being mindless pathetic pawns. They performed one demeaning humiliating task after another all for the chance to be part of a fraternity. I really don't know the benefits of fraternity brotherhood but it can't be worth what the Mission College Gamma Phi Gamma pledges put themselves through.
As the movie winded through a diorama of major school functions and events to depict the typical school year at an HBCU (Historically Black College/University) it inevitably had to end. Endings are not a specialty of Spike Lee's. After nearly two hours of a drama/musical showing us the issues amongst Black people generally and the issues on a Black college campus more specifically, the movie abruptly ended. It more than abruptly ended, it abruptly ended with a breaking of the fourth wall.
The final message: "Wake up!"
"Wake up" as a message is excellent, but there is something wrong with your movie if you have to explicitly tell your audience to wake up. I thought that was implicitly understood. Instead of writing in a conflict resolution, like most decent movies do, with an implied message he decided, "This movie has been running long enough. I think I'll stop here and just tell the people to wake up." That is unorthodox to say the least while lazy is probably a better description.
Spike spilled coffee all over the nice rug that was his film. It was like he was writing a good book, was nearing the end, spilled ink all over the last page and decided to stop and publish the book as is. Spike would go on to do a similar awkward ending in Jungle Fever except overall that movie was a lot worse. School Daze tackled some deep issues in a fairly creative manner, it's just too bad Spike got a case of writer's block at the end.
School Daze addresses some very sensitive issues pertaining to African-Americans/Black-Americans (that's one of the issues). It's a conscious movie or, to use a '10's term, it's a woke movie. This is an early Spike Lee flick with the peculiarities of a Spike Lee flick.
One of the main issues elucidated in the movie was that of the term African-American vis-a-vis Black. The term wasn't at issue so much as the Africanness of Black-Americans. One side stressed the importance of Black people connecting with their African roots and reclaiming their African heritage. The opposing side of that point is that Black people have no real connection to Africa besides skin color and physical attributes. Both sides have compelling arguments and I would say both sides are right and I appreciated it being brought up on film.
Another issue which plagues African-Americans is the issue of "good" hair versus natural hair. The term "bad" hair is never used but it is directly implied when calling straighter finer hair "good" hair. This hang up afflicts women more than men for obvious reasons and Spike Lee had two groups of women face off in the movie to highlight the beef. Unfortunately, those with "good" hair sank to the level of calling the darker natural haired women "jigaboos." In my book that term is only second to the N-word in despicableness. Unlike the first issue, this matter has a right and wrong.
Spike also brought up light-skinned versus dark-skinned. Again, another highly divisive and highly sensitive issue. And again I think it also has a right and wrong.
One of the biggest issues, which was a central theme, was that of fraternity pledges versus non-pledges. I think it was used, at times, symbolically to represent the internal strifes between African-Americans (conscious v. sleep, dark v. light, "good" hair v. natural hair, African v. Black), but at other times it seemed to be simply frat life v. non-frat life. The pledges were depicted as being mindless pathetic pawns. They performed one demeaning humiliating task after another all for the chance to be part of a fraternity. I really don't know the benefits of fraternity brotherhood but it can't be worth what the Mission College Gamma Phi Gamma pledges put themselves through.
As the movie winded through a diorama of major school functions and events to depict the typical school year at an HBCU (Historically Black College/University) it inevitably had to end. Endings are not a specialty of Spike Lee's. After nearly two hours of a drama/musical showing us the issues amongst Black people generally and the issues on a Black college campus more specifically, the movie abruptly ended. It more than abruptly ended, it abruptly ended with a breaking of the fourth wall.
The final message: "Wake up!"
"Wake up" as a message is excellent, but there is something wrong with your movie if you have to explicitly tell your audience to wake up. I thought that was implicitly understood. Instead of writing in a conflict resolution, like most decent movies do, with an implied message he decided, "This movie has been running long enough. I think I'll stop here and just tell the people to wake up." That is unorthodox to say the least while lazy is probably a better description.
Spike spilled coffee all over the nice rug that was his film. It was like he was writing a good book, was nearing the end, spilled ink all over the last page and decided to stop and publish the book as is. Spike would go on to do a similar awkward ending in Jungle Fever except overall that movie was a lot worse. School Daze tackled some deep issues in a fairly creative manner, it's just too bad Spike got a case of writer's block at the end.