I owe Spike Lee money. I’ve seen so many of his best movies by seeing them in free theatrical showings or renting them on VHS, DVD or streaming: 25th Hour, Inside Man, Do the Right Thing, Bamboozled, 4 Little Girls, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Passing Strange, Mo’ne Davis: I Throw Like A Girl. Honestly I think the greatest American movie made after 9/11 was 25th Hour. 25th Hour is one of my favorite movies of all time, and the fact that he didn’t even get nominated for an Oscar delegitimized the Oscars for me forever, and I haven’t watched that award show since. Thank God that I did pay often and frequently to see Malcolm X and Jungle Fever.
Then there are the films that I rented that were solid films, but not the first ones that you would remember as standouts in his filmography: He Got Game, Get on the Bus, A Huey P. Newton Story, Jim Brown: All American. Some just weren’t for me: Kobe Doin’ Work. Unfortunately I seem to have a talent for paying for the ones that I didn’t enjoy as much, but had great critical acclaim: Crooklyn, Clockers, Girl 6, Summer of Sam, Miracle at St. Anna.
I’ve also rented quite a few that were considered great, but I viewed as problematic because of Lee’s depictions of women: She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze, Mo’ Better Blues, She Hate Me. Some artists, regardless of that artist’s gender affiliation, can depict the opposite gender as complete human beings with sexuality as an aspect of their character. Lee primarily defines women in relation to men: sexuality is the first and usually defining characteristic of his female protagonists. So when I decided to see Chi-Raq in theaters and knew that the main character was a woman, I knew that the odds were not in my favor, but had no problem paying even if I didn’t love the movie, because I owe Spike Lee money.
Chi-Raq is a modern day adaptation of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes. I am not familiar with Lysistrata so if you have read it or seen it performed on stage and believe that my review is completely wrong, I will defer to you without question. Chi-Raq may be a perfect adaptation, but I am too much of a philistine to know or find out. Instead of the Peloponnesian War between the Athenians and Spartans, in Chi-Raq, it is not a war between empires, but gangs within different neighborhoods of the city of Chicago: the purple clad Spartans led by a rapper named Chi-Raq, played by Nick Cannon (Really, isn’t he more of a comedian and celebrity personality? America’s Got Talent and Nickelodeon child star. I’ll give him Drumline.) and the orange-clad Trojans led by Cyclops, played by everyone’s favorite day walker Wesley Snipes, who may be a little old to play a gang leader, but I don’t care and am willing to sign a waiver. Blade is free! Chi-Raq, the rapper, dates the fairest of them all, Lysistrata, played by Teyonah Parris, who is the real star of Chi-Raq, the movie, and may be best remembered for her amazing work in Dear White People as Coco, the ambitious, but conflicted character who wants to be accepted by the establishment and distance herself from certain cultural stereotypes at great personal emotional costs that eventually she can’t pay.
Lysistrata is personally affected by gang violence, becomes outraged at the death of a young girl and under the tutelage of the eternally fabulous Angela Bassett, her next door neighbor, decides to organize all women, starting with the Spartans and Trojans, for peace. Chi-Raq, the movie, cleverly makes the point that this has happened recently in real life and worked. Indeed the first hour or more of Chi-Raq is dynamic, and the timing is quite perfect considering the mass shooting crisis occurring in US today, but after the first hour, as Chi-Raq focuses less on those fighting for peace and more on those fighting for piece, the film becomes scattered, meandering and uneven. The dramatic tonal shift from emotionally resonant and relatable characters to absurd, comedic situations undercut the seriousness of the crisis instead of giving the audience a humorous break from the gravity of wasted life.
Chi-Raq will probably not be a timeless movie. Chi-Raq is rooted in a very specific time and place despite its global pretensions. I think that a viewer’s enjoyment of Chi-Raq is directly proportional to how familiar the audience is with the issues raised in this film: unarmed victims of police violence, the new Jim Crow, etc. Chi-Raq may be a preach to the choir film. If you get the references, you’ll enjoy it more, and if you don’t, best-case scenario, you may feel slightly enlightened, and worst-case scenario, you’ll just leave confused.
Chi-Raq feels like what Spike Lee’s Facebook wall or internet searches must have looked like in the last couple of years: he finally got to address all the super serious news stories since the murder of Trayvon Martin interspersed with different synonyms in different languages for vagina and penis. After awhile, Chi-raq gets tiresome, and you just want it to end. When the women start wearing chastity belts and looking like extras from Run The World (Girls) instead of sweat pants and yoga pants when men aren’t around for them to drive crazy with sexual desire, Chi-Raq becomes too absurd. Towards the end, Chi-Raq reminded me of the Saturday Night Live skit of Woodbridge High School Student Theater Showcase or when Keenan Ivory Wayans’ Mailman who screams “Message!” in Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. As more characters are introduced, they are less people, and more mouthpieces to spout important aphorisms. All the scenes with the armory were a bit much for me. The last forty-five minutes were a bit torturous, and I felt like Chi-raq would never end.
I understand that Chi-raq is satire and can’t address all aspects of gang violence, but it doesn’t help that Lee has a very simplistic view of gender and sexuality, particularly in relation to violence. All men just have one thing on their mind and will be driven mad without sex. The women’s power is directly proportional to their looks and ability to pull a man, both literally and figuratively. In real life, women are just as active perpetrators of gang violence and are not solely the romantic interests of the male gang leaders. In Lee’s filmography, you rarely see a terrifying woman whose sexuality is the last thing on your mind. There will never be as terrifying a gang member as Snoop in The Wire, who was played by a real life female gang-member. There will never be a Michelle Forbes as Admiral Helena Cain, a woman capable of war crimes, including rape and torture. I am aware that Lee hasn’t done sci-fi. If Lee’s work hadn’t already consistently portrayed women as perfectly pretty packages of male desire first, then maybe I would not view Chi-raq so critically, but I think that Chi-raq is a natural continuum of his views on gender and sexuality. Basically Lee is a political revolutionary, but has quite conventional or traditional views when it comes to gender and sexuality. Eye-roll to the slutty mom made me do it toss away scene.
Even Lee’s lesser works are ambitious misses so even though Chi-raq wasn’t my cup of tea, it is still better crafted and has better moments than the entirety of most financially successful movies. The most notable and perfect scenes include Roger Guenveur Smith and Angela Bassett in a brief exchange when he is looking for her sister. Any scene with John Cusack works as one of the good parish priests. Oddly enough, even though Lee may or may not be a Christian, he depicts the tone of Cusack’s scenes perfectly- neither proselytizing nor ridiculing. They are some of the most realistic scenes in Chi-Raq. Dave Chappelle works as the strip club owner.
Chi-Raq is torn between being meaningful and prurient, suffers from dramatic to comedic tonal shifts that can cause whiplash and is a bit stiff in its gender constructs of violence and sexuality, but because it is made by one of the greatest and sincerest American directors and artists of all time, the parts of Chi-raq that work really soar. Unfortunately as Chi-raq progresses, those parts appear less frequently and get overshadowed by juvenile sexual comedy. If you feel like you owe Spike Lee money, see Chi-raq in theaters, but it is far from being one of his timeless classics.