Review by Reece Beckett
Varied cinematic representations of the Ku Klux Klan date back almost as far as cinema itself.
Going back to 1915, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation was the first major (and first majorly profitable) cinematic event, bringing unprecedentedly large audiences to theaters and introducing them to the power of cinema. At the time, almost everybody adored it, hell, even President Woodrow Wilson infamously said that the film was ‘like writing history with lightning’ - a statement that may have been responsible for the start of capitalism taking hold of cinema, but also a statement that shows admiration for the Klan from the man in control of the most powerful country in the world due to cinematic representation. To say that this moment has tainted cinema would be an understatement - at a crucial moment in film becoming what it is today, success was found (and future success became based) upon a foundation of racism.
Cinematic Klan representations have changed to keep with the times, gradually devolving Klan members from heroes to powerful villains (as in Lee’s own Malcolm X biopic, among others) to complete imbeciles (Django Unchained and BlacKkKlansman). Unfortunately, as Lee proves with his exhilarating 2018 film, BlacKkKlansman, the KKK has done the opposite in terms of representing themselves to the public, morphing from a low-brow group fueled by racial violence generally associated with lazy, uneducated men to a political group who now have one of their former leaders acting as a prominent politician despite his past as Grand Wizard of the Klan.
BlacKkKlansman opens with a brilliantly funny scene that Alec Baldwin starts by stating that America is under attack. The cause of this attack? ‘The spread of integration’. Baldwin’s character is so disgusted by integration that he even splutters after simply saying the word ‘brown’. Footage of Gone with the Wind (a film that made Hattie McDaniel the first black Oscar winner, but also had her character as an excruciatingly stereotypical black maid - surely a bittersweet moment for black representation) and The Birth of a Nation are projected onto Baldwin’s face as he speaks of black people as ‘monkeys, rapists, murderers, predators’, and thus, a bond is made between the cinematic representations of black people and the perception of them outside of cinema. As mentioned above, cinema began with films that portrayed black people as almost literal monsters, and so, as this carried on the perception of African Americans only continued to deteriorate.
Cut to the late 1970s. The blaxsploitation genre took off in the 1970s after George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead portrayed a black man as the hero of the zombie apocalypse… only to have police shoot him down with no hesitation. Meanwhile, Ron Stallworth becomes the first black police officer in Colorado Springs, and eventually finds himself interested in a Klan newspaper advertisement that sparks an undercover investigation, a chance to ‘infiltrate hate’. Things largely go to plan and it isn’t long before Ron has established connection with the Klan and convinced his colleague Flip (who was named Chuck in reality - one of many obscure changes Lee made in adapting Stallworth’s memoir) to dive into the Klan head-first. The two work together and manage to stop a bombing perpetrated by the Klan. All seems wonderful right up until the final scene reveals that whilst they may have stopped one incident, the Klan is far from finished and the police are more than happy to cover the entire operation up… but it’s still great fun to see Stallworth get the last laugh during a hilarious phone call with David Duke. This may sound like a very basic story, and it is when you look past the absurdity of a black man joining the Klan, but that is entirely the point. In BlacKkKlansman, the fun buddy cop throwback is a sneaky facade hiding the meat of Spike’s script.
First, I’ll address the elephant in the room - the closing montage. The ending uses footage from 2018 of David Duke (the Grand Wizard of the Klan in the film, and in real life during the late 70s) as a politician, and then shows how the Klan still operates exactly as it has since the time setting of the Birth of a Nation as a violent organisation, only under an even more insidious veil that makes them harder to spot. The Klan went from hiding underground to being elected into office. Lee’s closing montage (an auteur trait if ever there was!) brings things full circle, perfectly summarizing that nothing has really changed, despite the best efforts of all involved.
Spike’s bond between cinematic representations of black people and the troubles with racism in America today only becomes sharper with additional subtext. Let’s look at Spike Lee himself, a relentless crusader working within the film industry - a racist institution - to make a positive change for his people (are we seeing a parallel here?). Spike has infiltrated Hollywood in the very same way that Stallworth infiltrated the Klan - both have infiltrated hate. At one point, Patrice (the president of the local Black Student Union) tells Ron that there is no way to change the police - another racist institution - from the inside, but evidently he manages to do so to a certain extent, just as Spike Lee does within Hollywood.
In another scene, the blaxsploitation genre is discussed as simultaneously oppressive and necessary escapism. Spike’s film plays the opposite way - on the surface, it is a freewheeling throwback buddy-cop comedy, but underneath this surface it reviles institutionalized racism (wherever it comes from - the Klan, Hollywood or the police) in a way rarely done by anyone but Spike currently. These fascinating dualities may seem incidental, however, when thinking of W.E.B. Du Bois’ famous theory of the black man’s ‘double consciousness’ (a theory openly discussed in the film), all of these doubles begin to make more sense. Stuck in an unfamiliar setting for the black man (just as slaves were in America originally), both Spike and Ron are managing/have already managed to change the world for the better.