Respond to the following questions in the comments section below:
In "Spike Lee at the Movies" Amiri Baraka writes of Do the Right Thing:
"The killing of Rahim, attributed to the loud radio, trivialized the Black Liberation Movement in the same way that the bugged out movement for Black photos in the pizza parlor does...Spike's repeated response is that he has no answers to state, that art was, by his definition, vague, general and noncommittal yet could utilize the saleable aspects of Black consciousness as an umbilical cord of social 'relevance'."
From your viewing of the film, do you agree with Baraka's critique of Lee's "art"? Does Wahneema Lubiano's discussion of realism and essentialism (Section III) complicate and/or expand upon Baraka's reception of the film?
Read Gabriel Thompson's article "The United Nations of Brooklyn" (The New York Times, October 21, 2007)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/nyregion/thecity/21bens.html
In what ways does the multi-ethnic make-up of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn described by Thompson differ from the society envisioned in Lee's 1989 film? How is it similar? In this new context, is Lee's work still salient?
Respond to the two questions in the comments section below:
In "Class and American Boxing Films" Aaron Baker writes:
"Jake LaMotta's social dysfunction arises from his confusion about his racial, class and sexual identities."
From your viewing of Raging Bull, provide one example (i.e. describe a scene, use of a camera/ sound/ lighting technique) that conveys the protagonist's crisis of identity.
Later Baker writes,
"Rocky and Raging Bull (1980) feature protagonists who believe passionately in their ability to single-handedly transcend social categories such as class and race. Stallone's film endorses that goal, while Scorsese's presents Jake LaMotta as achieving a kind of Christian transcendence for finally accepting its impossibility."
From your viewing and the Guglielmo and Dyer readings, does the film's protagonist fail to overcome these social categories? If so, why?