New Mood, Lost Groove--Second Take on Jungle Fever
Jungle Fever (1991)
Was life so different 18 years ago that I would think this movie a brilliant if affected romance, and today I find its preachy stiffness clichéd to distraction?
If so, why? And when does a lack of realism rise above artifice to become art, and artful directing? I still admire Spike Lee, but with more caveats, more questions.
There are internal clues to Lee's choosing style over realism. The highly chromed gun, still hot from the preacher/father archetype killing his son the sweetly selfish druggie archetype, is set squarely on an open Bible. The black lead male, playfully wrestling with the white lead female on top of a car in what seems like a rape out in the street (like they weren't a little bit cautious?), of course leads seconds later to cops acting brutal and protective of the girl, guns pointing at heads, and there is the realization that a biracial affair might be nearly impossible. Snap, like that. It's all artifice. Even the steady flipping and exaggeration of stereotypes in the movie, and the drumbeat of political conversation about race, race and sexual stereotypes, reveals a director with a purpose, and a purpose that overwhelms the drama, the narrative romance.
Because this is a romance, plain and simple. And yet surely Spike Lee said to himself at an early stage: who needs another routine if well made romantic movie? Even if the two leads are of different color. And so we have a confession (if he ever said this) that he is after something more, and that something more is going to consume the romance. Fair enough. But do we need to be lectured to? Even if we agree, or especially if we agree, that people should love and make love to whoever they want, does it help to have transparent points about textbook injustice constantly scratching at us while wanting to just enjoy all the emotional, interracial conflicts?
Well, let's defer for a minute. Because it would frankly be easier to dismiss the movie as a heavy handed polemic failure. Which it is not. It has many moments of both cinematic and theatric brilliance (from a hugely talented cast). I really wanted to get sucked in, and when I sometimes did start to disappear into that world, I was pushed back out.
Take the scene with all the women, ostensibly black (or actually black) but of different color skin, talking with great elevation and personality about being of color, and of men wanting women of color (or not), and of them wanting men of color (or not), and really batting the issue around with a kind of grad school but earthy intelligence. Everyone is correct in their own context, and within their character roles they make their points vivid, and sometimes a camera angle or shift from one face to another is elegant and affecting in the best way. But hey, no matter how truly cerebral these women would be in real life, and how well meaning, and how well versed in these issues through life and on paper, would they have this kind of gem of a discussion the way Lee presents it? Unlikely. Or impossible. No, he compressed it into something unreal, something better than real perhaps, built on kernels of reality. We know it represents the truth, not just sociologically but as individuals with complex emotional responses. That's good. That it remains a represented truth lacking narrative transparency is less good, or less easy. We believe, we nod, we assent, and we nod off. Contrivance intrudes and rebuffs.
There are lots of high profile movies that live on their un-realism (they are actively non- real), from Night of the Hunter to Kill Bill with West Side Story and every other musical thrown in the middle. Certainly, the first five decades of film history are about stylized worlds that we must read through, suspending our realities, accepting the form. We are not usually made to believe we are watching reality itself. Jungle Fever is not like The Bicycle Thief, not one bit, and that's fine.
But then, accepting this (tentatively), we still need to care enough about the movie to watch it through. That is, of the many movie-making tricks for grabbing the viewers and holding them, one or more have to be persuasively in place. As a top-of-the-head counter- example, consider Crash, which a decade after Jungle Fever dealt with some of the same issues in a different kind of city, and in a more lyrical, almost dreamlike way. Crash held me with very few reservations from start to finish. It held me and sometime entranced me even though I knew it was as "false" and at times as obliquely preachy as Jungle Fever.
So I struggled this second and third time, even though I remember loving the movie when it was released. But look at it this way: if the movie said things we needed to hear in 1991 and we don't respond to as well now, it might be because we've moved past some of that in 2009. That's what my students say, and so that's a pretty terrific thing. If it means the movie is aging badly, let's wait for another decade to correct itself it once again.
Jungle Fever (1991)
Was life so different 18 years ago that I would think this movie a brilliant if affected romance, and today I find its preachy stiffness clichéd to distraction?
If so, why? And when does a lack of realism rise above artifice to become art, and artful directing? I still admire Spike Lee, but with more caveats, more questions.
There are internal clues to Lee's choosing style over realism. The highly chromed gun, still hot from the preacher/father archetype killing his son the sweetly selfish druggie archetype, is set squarely on an open Bible. The black lead male, playfully wrestling with the white lead female on top of a car in what seems like a rape out in the street (like they weren't a little bit cautious?), of course leads seconds later to cops acting brutal and protective of the girl, guns pointing at heads, and there is the realization that a biracial affair might be nearly impossible. Snap, like that. It's all artifice. Even the steady flipping and exaggeration of stereotypes in the movie, and the drumbeat of political conversation about race, race and sexual stereotypes, reveals a director with a purpose, and a purpose that overwhelms the drama, the narrative romance.
Because this is a romance, plain and simple. And yet surely Spike Lee said to himself at an early stage: who needs another routine if well made romantic movie? Even if the two leads are of different color. And so we have a confession (if he ever said this) that he is after something more, and that something more is going to consume the romance. Fair enough. But do we need to be lectured to? Even if we agree, or especially if we agree, that people should love and make love to whoever they want, does it help to have transparent points about textbook injustice constantly scratching at us while wanting to just enjoy all the emotional, interracial conflicts?
Well, let's defer for a minute. Because it would frankly be easier to dismiss the movie as a heavy handed polemic failure. Which it is not. It has many moments of both cinematic and theatric brilliance (from a hugely talented cast). I really wanted to get sucked in, and when I sometimes did start to disappear into that world, I was pushed back out.
Take the scene with all the women, ostensibly black (or actually black) but of different color skin, talking with great elevation and personality about being of color, and of men wanting women of color (or not), and of them wanting men of color (or not), and really batting the issue around with a kind of grad school but earthy intelligence. Everyone is correct in their own context, and within their character roles they make their points vivid, and sometimes a camera angle or shift from one face to another is elegant and affecting in the best way. But hey, no matter how truly cerebral these women would be in real life, and how well meaning, and how well versed in these issues through life and on paper, would they have this kind of gem of a discussion the way Lee presents it? Unlikely. Or impossible. No, he compressed it into something unreal, something better than real perhaps, built on kernels of reality. We know it represents the truth, not just sociologically but as individuals with complex emotional responses. That's good. That it remains a represented truth lacking narrative transparency is less good, or less easy. We believe, we nod, we assent, and we nod off. Contrivance intrudes and rebuffs.
There are lots of high profile movies that live on their un-realism (they are actively non- real), from Night of the Hunter to Kill Bill with West Side Story and every other musical thrown in the middle. Certainly, the first five decades of film history are about stylized worlds that we must read through, suspending our realities, accepting the form. We are not usually made to believe we are watching reality itself. Jungle Fever is not like The Bicycle Thief, not one bit, and that's fine.
But then, accepting this (tentatively), we still need to care enough about the movie to watch it through. That is, of the many movie-making tricks for grabbing the viewers and holding them, one or more have to be persuasively in place. As a top-of-the-head counter- example, consider Crash, which a decade after Jungle Fever dealt with some of the same issues in a different kind of city, and in a more lyrical, almost dreamlike way. Crash held me with very few reservations from start to finish. It held me and sometime entranced me even though I knew it was as "false" and at times as obliquely preachy as Jungle Fever.
So I struggled this second and third time, even though I remember loving the movie when it was released. But look at it this way: if the movie said things we needed to hear in 1991 and we don't respond to as well now, it might be because we've moved past some of that in 2009. That's what my students say, and so that's a pretty terrific thing. If it means the movie is aging badly, let's wait for another decade to correct itself it once again.