Spike Lee's Red Hook Summer

Red Hook Summer wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We get the usual "Angry Spike Lee" moments against gentrification, Obama's do-nothingness for black folks and po' folks, and Clarke Peters is a great actor. We even get a funny The Wire reference when the actor who plays Senator Clay Davis appears as a detective in Red Hook, saying "Shiiiiiiiiiiit." The film is visually quite interesting despite the bleak urban layout of Red Hook: projects, lots of green in desolate Brooklyn streets with 80% unempoloyment, and juvenocracy. The negatives: the seemingly absent transition scenes, lack of any real resolution or progress in the conclusion of the film (despite some unsurprising and interesting revelations about Flik's grandfather, which wasn't built up to very well), and Mookie's irrelevant and unnecessary appearance. Mookie does absolutely nothing to advance the plot and has no real reason for being a pizza delivery boy in Red Hook. Furthermore, one does not 'feel' Red Hook in the same way one does Bed-Stuy in Do the Right Thing, despite the attempts by Lee to use real residents and community spaces in the film. It just ain't right. Overall, not an overwhelmingly horrible film experience, given Spike's on point observations on race relations, class, and politics, but it does not seem to have much of a plot given the unsatisfactory ending. Perhaps there is some meaning attached to the film's conclusion given Flik's admission of falling in 'like' with someone he meets in Red Hook before returning to Atlanta, and Flik learning his roots  through his grandfather to become a man (a point expressed by Chazz's mother is that young male youths need strong male figures and role models, as well as strong parents, which suggests that Flik's mother sent him to stay with her father in order to teach him a lesson.

Some interesting themes in the film are the uncomfortable but growing presence (something Flik notes as discomforting and racially-loaded) of white gentrifiers in Red Hook, a topic Bishop Enoch Rouse brilliantly criticizes the black middle-class for since they left Red Hook for a "better house, better schools, better life" while leaving behind their less fortunate African-American community. This, in turn, has paved the way for white newcomers to profit off lower property values and takeover more and more of black Brooklyn since black folks with money still ain't wanted in majority-white neighborhoods and suburbs anyway. The film also has some disturbing and contradictory messages about Christ and the black church, in spite of breath-taking sermons and gospel chanting and singing in Bishop Enoch's Baptist church. Indeed, Christianity and religion in general, for poor, black ghettos, becomes like crack and drugs. The 'addiction' and money-grabbing of black churches, taking away from the black poor and lulling them with false security and solace, proves what brother Akil said about the two biggest drugs in the 'hood being crack and Christ. I suppose it's up for the viewer to take away from the film's religious themes what one wants to, but it does not paint a very flattering portrait of the church nor Bishop Enouch Rouse, who penance for his sinful past is his service at the low attendance black church in Red Hook. The film's black nationalist outlook also arises through critiques of gentrification, Obama's election not bringing any substantive change to black folks in America, and the growing class divide across the country. Reverse migration of African-Americans back to the South also comes up as an issue, since New York is so expensive and black folk can return to their roots/routes, a journey that the Bishop makes in reverse. But the film's overall message seems to be the maturation of a teenager and the public spectacle of the the Bishop's fall from grace after several years of turning his thoughts to the Lord.