Why Hollywood directors feel the need to levy their judgment on the current state of politics is anyone’s guess. Somehow the elite feel that wealth and media exposure gives them a virtuous pulpit to preach from.
However, their ravings come across as old, tired, and stale. At the Cannes Film Festival, director Spike Lee premiered his film, BlacKkKlansman, with a heavy dose of political commentary. Vulture reported his remarks in full on May 15, stating that Lee launched into a tirade. He said, “The so-called American cradle of democracy, that’s bullshit.”
Lee’s film starts with a coda, a montage of the “conflict in Charlottesville...that ends with a dedication to Heather Heyer.” Lee referred to the event at a press conference for his film, saying, “It’s an ugly, ugly, ugly blemish on the United States of America.”
And of course, Trump is to blame. Lee said, “We have a guy in the White House -- I’m not going to say his fucking name -- who defined that moment not just for Americans but the world, and that motherfucker was given the chance to say we are about love, not hate. And that motherfucker did not denounce the motherfucking Klan, the alt-right, and those Nazi motherfuckers. It was a defining moment, and he could have said that to the world, not just the United States, that we were better than that.”
But wait, there’s more! Not only did Lee have a lot to say about Trump, but he also offered his brutal perspective on America and conservatives. “The United States of America was built on the genocide of native people and slavery. That is the fabric of the United States of America. As my Brooklyn brother Jay-Z would say, facts.”
His judgment on conservatives was just as heavy-handed: “And I like to say this is not just something that pertains to the United States of America, this bullshit has gone over the world. This right-wing bullshit is not just America, it is all over the world, and we have to wake up.”
Surprisingly, this is not the worst of Spike Lee’s comments over the years aimed at conservative politics. In 1999, the director angrily raged that actor Charlton Heston should have been “shot with a .44 Bull Dog.” In March of 2012, after the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Lee tweeted out what he thought was the address of George Zimmerman, but instead turned out to be an innocent couple who were forced to flee their home in the face of misdirected death threats. The couple ended up suing Lee.
