It is no secret that Spike Lee has been critiqued quite often for his depiction of women in his films. When thinking in terms of Spike Lee films that stand out for their depictions of womanhood movies like She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze, and Crooklyn come to mind. What’s interesting though is the different perspectives that these films take on women. In outside reviews many looked at She’s Gotta Have It as a sort of Indie film challenging societal notions of what it means to be a female, while on the other hand as we saw in class many had a problem with his decisions for the females in School Daze. Overall it becomes confusing when one tries to conceptualize what Spike Lee is attempting to achieve with the ideas of womanhood in his films.
In an article entitled Do the Right Thing @ 20: Spike’s Woman Problem, Teresa Wiltz takes a look at many of his films and discusses the contradictory and problematic depictions of womanhood in his films. She describes Spike Lee’s confusion by pointing out that “when it comes to his female characters, it’s as though Lee can’t decide whether to worship them or punish them” going even further to say that he has his saints and his sinners.
It is safe to say that depictions of womanhood is where Spike Lee falls short and he even went so far to say it himself cited in this article from an interview in which he stated “that he’s allowed ‘unreconstructed male chauvinism’ to play a big role in his films.” He stated this in 2005 so the question than remains whether Lee is choosing to be complacent about this or will we see things change in the films to come. Could this have played a role in his decision to make Nola into a Jehovah’s Witness in his most recent film Red Hook Summer?
Check out the article here http://www.theroot.com/views/spikes-woman-problem?page=0,0
Womanhood in Spike Lee Joints 