The Screengrab

Flags Of Our Fathers was set at a time when the US miltary had not yet been fully de-segregated. However, one of its leading characters was Ira Hayes, a Native American soldier. As forv Letters From Iwo Jima, I don't recall reading about any 'Negro' (as he puts it) soldiers fighting on the Japanese side.

As far as his comments about the Coens....what? I must have missed the thigh-slapping giggles during the shocking, ugly, soberly-portrayed violence in No Country For Old Men. Anyway, surely the man who wrote and directed Do The Right Thing understands the concept of gallows humour?

This guy has always been his own worst enemy. He's a reactionary gasbag posing as an intellectual sophisticate. There's a big difference between justifiable outrage at other people's iniquities and being a bitter, attention-starved professional victim. Guess which camp Spike crossed over into somewhere in the early 90s?

And your point about the Nike ads is spot on.

Amen!  Nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks that the failure to cast Denzel as Ira Hayes was racist.  

It's interesting that no one has done any particular research on Negroes in WWII on the Japanese side--despite their presence.  Perhaps our own inability to see history as textured enough to include other races explains why so many historical films seem to portray a homogeneous America, rather than the "melting pot' we love to boast of.  Or maybe it's that when we're in our own white world (or black one), we just do not see other groups of people.  They simply do not exist.

I have to say this piece has a bias that is more than palpable.  The fact that no current Lee film--Four Little Girls or Bamboozled would do--could be brought up by the commenter also speaks to how influential Lee has been to those who do not wish to see him.

But maybe I'm tripping.  His stories only happen in the black world, after all.  *hums melody from School Daze*

Its funny that those individuals are singled out now when the whole Hollywood complex seems to have less non-white actors in it's productions than I can remember in recent memory.

And to Ori:  Summer and Sam and 25th Hour didn't seem to take place in a "black" world.

Is Spike Lee still culturally relevant? Do we really care? I know he wins the award for "noisiest black filmmaker" every year, but why does he bother to speak anymore?

He seems a little short on relevance these days.

Look: the fact that a movie was set "during a time when our military had not fully been de-segregated" is a bit of a cop-out, don't you think? ("But there *was* one person of color! A Native American! Will you people just calm down now?") Spike may be a little too direct about things, but he isn't the first person to comment along these lines (there was a Guardian article about this in 2006 as well, including statements from black soldiers who directly took part in the battle).

And the comment(s) re: the Coen Brothers? How is saying, "I love them, but don't see things the same way artistically" anything other than recognition and brotherly (in the "from one director to another" sense) criticism?

Finally: Lee's making a documentary on Michael Jordan. Jordan is part of the Nike empire. Nike's Air Jordans were made in Asian sweatshops--something that was very well documented at the time. But the real point is this: the documentary isn't even finished, and already Von Doviak is implying that Lee will simply gloss over the event. At least Spike is commenting/criticizing something that actually exists, that any of us can observe and judge on our own; Von Doviak is simply making things up.

My whole point was it's kind of rich to call someone a racist when they're going out of their way to make racial division part of the movie's theme. I'm not that in love with Eastwood myself these days (I found these two war movies and Million Dollar Baby suffered from Slow, Ponderous, Award Winning Film Disease....or as I've dubbed it, 'Haggis-itis'), but when you consider that it was Eastwood who was partly responsible for the renaissance of Morgan Freeman's career in Unforgiven, and that he went out of his way and took a big risk in career terms by directing the excellent Bird, which helped establish Forest Whitaker as a major star, as well as making an attempt to get Charlie Parker's music more widely heard, I think Spike is way off base in calling Eastwood a racist.

And I feel we may be reading different quotes on the Coens: if you're familiar with Spike's interview technique, you know that he wasn't just expressing a differnce of pinion, he was once again sneering at another film maker for their perceived moral deficiencies.

When did Spike Lee accuse Eastwood of being a racist?

Tacitly, by bringing up the lack of black actors i the Iwo Jima movies. Why, what point do YOU think he was making?

There's a BIG leap in accusing someone of racism simply because they are pointing out the fact that African American's served in armed forces during World War II.

Just because someone is an American of African descent and pointing out an historical fact that doesn't get portrayed in Hollywood often enough, doesn't mean they are accusing an individual of racism.  It's not that simple.