Auteur (S7)

• Lee auteur features...
• It's not a movie, it's a...

  Spike Lee joint
• Set in Brooklyn


  Bed-Stuy
• Character introductions through symbolism


  RR's boombox, Tina dancing, Smiley's pictures
• Idiosyncratic tone


  Gentrification scene
• Vibrant colours - saturated, high contrast


  Warm toned colour palette to reflect heat
• Bold unconventional camera


  Dutch/canted angles, zooms, extreme low angles
• Stylised talk


  Mr Senor Love Daddy's radio
• Film Lessons


  RR's love-hate knuckle dusters reference to Night of the Hunter
• Spike in the cast

  Mookie
• Nuanced look at race


  Police brutality, gentrification, police profiling, systematic racism, non-white immigration, two strands of black activism -MLK and Malcom X
• Politics of desire


  Unnecessary sex scene
• Documentary footage


  Photo at the end of MLK and Malcom X
• Breaks in action


  Race rant
• Breaking fourth wall


  Race rant and Smiley
• "Wake up!"


  Mr Senor Love Daddy opening scene, Mookie waking up Tina
• Fearless approach to social themes:

  Riot scene
• Strong female characters


  Jade, Tina, Mother Sister
• Evocative end credits


  Malcom X and MLK
• Depicting contemporary African American culture
• Lee's interior meaning:


  -Lee cinephile --> puts intertextual references in his films -film lessons

  -Focus on the issues that face black people --> "my job as a filmmaker is to shed light on the problems that face us and by examination of these problems, hopefully an answer can be worked out