An Analysis of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman
Rachel Tucker
Dr. Nicholas de Villiers
FIL3006
Fall 2018
An Analysis of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman
BlacKkKlansman (dir. Spike Lee, 2018) is a film that draws on the conventions of the police procedural genre while using real life footage to draw comparisons between the fictionalized world of the film and reality. These conventions include a protagonist who “doesn’t play by the rules”, editing to create tension, and a love interest that causes conflict. Spike Lee also plays homage to the Blaxploitation genre, which were popular at the time that the film takes place.
The film is based on Ron Stallworth’s memoir Black Klansman about his experiences as the Colorado Springs Police Department’s first black detective in the 1970s. After being hired as a police officer, working a menial job in the records department, Stallworth begs with his superiors for more fulfilling work. They allow him to go undercover and attend an event put on by the local college’s Black Student Union while wearing a wire to determine if they were radicalizing themselves. At the rally, he meets Patrice Dumas, president of the Black Student Union, and they strike up a friendship. Stallworth watches the speaker (activist Stokely Carmichael) and attempts to remain distant and professional, but is impacted and moved by his words. The next day, Stallworth comes across an ad for the Ku Klux Klan in the newspaper and becomes compelled to call them. He speaks with the chapter president and convinces him that he is also a racist white man who is interested in joining “the organization”. They set up a face to face meeting and Stallworth has a Jewish officer named Flip Zimmerman to pose as his white counterpart while wearing a wire. As the investigation continues, Stallworth moves up the ranks within the Klan and manages to form a relationship with their leader, David Duke, while still pretending to be a white man. He is also asked to be the leader of the local chapter of the Klan, but makes up a lie to refuse the position. Stallworth is able to prevent a terrorist attack on the Black Student Union by the Klan and the Klan members end up killing themselves instead. Stallworth is seen as a hero for his work in the investigation, but his superiors tell him to destroy all evidence to prevent the public from finding out about it. He places one final phone call to David Duke where he reveals himself as a black man and tells him off. Later, he is at his apartment with Patrice. They hear a knock at the door and step outside to see a cross burning in the distance. The film ends with actual footage from the “Unite the Right” Charlottesville demonstrations in 2017 showing white supremacists chanting hatred, clashing with counter-protestors, and running a car through a crowd of people. The film is dedicated to Heather Heyer, the woman who was killed.
A common convention in the police procedural genre is the protagonist – a police officer who “doesn’t play by the rules”. Teo Bugbee describes this as “a man of the law torn between allegiances in his efforts to solve a case” (Bugbee, 24). In the case of BlaKkKlansman, Ron Stallworth is torn between his identity as a black man and his career as a police officer. He witnesses the institutional racism perpetuated by the police firsthand yet feels compelled to work within the system to change it. Not only does he defy the expectations of this system simply by being a black man in a white-dominated profession, but he challenges white supremacy in an unconventional way. His colleagues often worry that his tactics stray too far from the norm and are often dangerous, such as when he interrupted a Klan meeting by throwing a rock through the window to take heat off of Flip, who nearly had his true ethnicity revealed. Like with most protagonists in cop films, Stallworth’s unconventional methods produce results.
Another common convention in police procedurals is editing that contains frequent crosscutting to create a tense mood. Spike Lee uses this frequently in BlacKkKlansman. One example of this is the sequence juxtaposing the Klan meeting with the Black Student Union meeting. At the Black Student Union meeting, people greet each other warmly and are welcomed into someone’s home. Meanwhile, the Klan members file silently into a bleak church basement with their faces covered. At the Black Student Union meeting, people are sitting quietly, somberly listening to an elderly black man tell the story of a disabled black kid from his hometown who was brutally beaten and lynched without evidence for allegedly raping a white woman. Meanwhile, the members of the Klan are watching Birth of a Nation – a racist silent film fictionalizing the formation of the Klan – while shouting at the screen and cheering on the Klan members as they chase down white actors in blackface. Lee also uses crosscutting to show the Klan members preparing their attack on the Black Student Union while the black students prepare for a demonstration. As this continues, the cuts become more rapid, creating an even more intense mood, until all of the actors arrive in the same place. Time appears to stand still compared to the preceding scenes and the protagonist has to act quickly to save everyone, which is also common in crime films.
The final convention that BlacKkKlansman shares with police procedurals is the love interest. In police procedurals (and crime films in general), the love interest is almost always a source of conflict for the protagonist. They often represent the life that the protagonist could have if they abandoned their case and are often pressured to choose. The love interest usually takes the form of a wife or serious girlfriend who wants the protagonist to settle down and start a family with them. However, in BlacKkKlansman, Patrice Dumas is not motivated by dreams of domesticity. She grew up witnessing police brutality and even experiences it herself during the film. Her opposition to Ron’s career isn’t simply a disagreement with his lifestyle, it’s a serious ethical conflict. Bugbee describes Patrice as “a mechanism to trigger Ron’s doubts, as her vision of black politics prioritizes granting power to all the people, challenging Ron’s ambitions to change the police from within the force” (Bugbee, 25). This conflict of philosophies harkens back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington debated whether the best course for black liberation would be to challenge the system or work within it. Patrice ultimately ends her relationship with Ron, but after they witness a cross burning together, they are reminded of the fact that despite their differences in opinion, they still experience racism and are still united against white supremacy.
Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman blends elements of police procedural, crime films, and blaxploitation films to create a film that feels at times both cartoonish and soberingly real. The conventions that it borrows from the police procedural genre are a protagonist who “doesn’t play by the rules”, editing to create tension, and a love interest that causes conflict. It transcends the genre by incorporating real life footage within the fictionalized universe of the film to remind the audience that while they are watching a dramatized retelling of a historical event, the prevalence of white supremacy is still a harsh reality in the United States.
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