Note: This article contains spoilers for BlacKkKlansman.
Since its initial release in the summer of 2018, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman has only become more and more relevant. With every day that’s passed, we’ve seen a darker side of America’s underbelly that refuses to go away. White supremacy was rife in the 1970s setting of the film, and white supremacy is rife in 2021 – we need only look at the storming of the Capitol not two weeks ago to see that. Lee’s film is scarily prescient in this way; it pulls no punches, and forces its audience to confront the fact that white supremacy has not gone away, and will not do so for a long, long time.
If you somehow haven’t seen BlacKkKlansman, first of all change that. Right now. I’ll wait. Because more so than any other film I’ve written about so far or intend to in the future, this is the movie that is most important for understanding the world we live in. It is a world of hatred, division, and violence, and if we are to change that, we must first understand it. Racism hasn’t gone away as many people would have us believe, it just moved out of the spotlight for a little while. What BlacKkKlansman does so brilliantly is to pull back the curtain and force us to realise that ourselves.
[We live in] a world of hatred, division, and violence, and if we are to change that, we must first understand it
And second of all, let me fill you in on the film. It follows Ron Stallworth (played by an entrancing John David Washington), a Black cop in Colorado Springs who decides to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. It’s a Spike Lee joint, and is based on a true story that went untold for decades. It’s a ferocious piece of filmmaking that wants to wake its audience up to the fact that racism didn’t die when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, and it certainly didn’t die with Donald Trump’s election eight years later. The film’s message is simple: racism is alive and well in the modern day, and it is our moral duty to stop it.
The way Lee gets this point across to his audience is extremely simple, yet incredibly powerful. He spends two hours with the film solely set in the ‘70s, and most crucially gives his characters a happy ending. The Klan’s assassination attempt is thwarted, a racist cop is arrested, and Ron lays into Klan leader David Duke over the phone in one of cinema’s most satisfying string of insults. But Lee knows that this isn’t how reality works. We’ve barely had a moment to settle into our heroes’ victory when the rug is yanked out from under our feet.
A gorgeous dolly movement reveals to us that Ron and co haven’t stopped the Klan at all – despite their best efforts, they’re still here. We’re then shown a montage of footage from Virginia in 2017, when white supremacists rallied in the town of Charlottesville and marched through the streets bearing torches and Nazi and Confederate flags chanting “white lives matter” and “Jews will not replace us.” They attacked peaceful counter-protestors, and one man rammed his car into a crowd of them. He injured 19 people and killed a woman named Heather Heyer, to whom BlacKkKlansman is dedicated. The perpetrator of the attack is currently serving life in prison.
BlacKkKlansman was the film that made me sit up and pay attention to the world. Art has the power to do that; it helps us understand the world around us
Trump’s various words about the attack have now become infamous. If you can’t remember, he said there were “very fine people on both sides.” That sentence is still shocking nearly four years later. The President of the United States equating white supremacists with peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors? Next you’ll be telling me that same president told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by!” Wait …
BlacKkKlansman was the film that made me sit up and pay attention to the world. Art has the power to do that; it helps us understand the world around us. Before I saw it, there was a lot about world politics that I didn’t understand. Now, several years later, there’s still a lot I don’t get – but I know very firmly where my personal politics stand. Three years ago I didn’t quite comprehend the evils of white supremacy, how full of hatred someone has to be to call themselves a white supremacist, or the threat that these groups pose to an equal and civilised society. Because of BlacKkKlansman, I understand these things now.
I understand now why Trump is so widely viewed as a threat to democracy as we know it. I understand the depths of his racism, his hatred for people of colour. I understand that he is not alone in such views, and that his millions of followers will continue to do his work long after he has been removed from office – and that last point scares me the most. Because Trump is not an isolated incident. He is merely a symptom – a symptom of the white supremacy and racism that has pervaded the entire West for decades, and that will not go away when one man is removed from his position of power.
Humanity is better than hating people based on the colour of their skin, and we deserve leaders who know that fact
Trump proved this not two weeks ago, when he incited rioters to storm the Capitol building in Washington, DC. It had been planned on social media for weeks, and yet police response was minimal. The crowd basically just swanned into the heart of American democracy and walked out again with their lives. And don’t you just know that if they’d been Black, they’d have been shot on sight? This was the latest in a long line of wakeup calls that the West is broken, and desperately needs fixing. And we can only do that by coming together.
BlacKkKlansman woke me up to these realisations. Yes, it’s funny and wry and enjoyable as hell in a way that Lee does better than just about anyone else in the industry. But it’s also a warning – a warning that we must never, ever let racism win. Humanity is better than hating people based on the colour of their skin, and we deserve leaders who know that fact. As I write this, Trump has just left the White House for the last time. His leaving the presidency behind will not fix the problems he brought to light – but it’s certainly a start. There’s a lot of work to be done across the world to fix racism, and this is only the first step of many. But America has taken that step, and it’s time we followed them – because the UK is far from innocent. And fixing that fact is next on the agenda. So let’s get to it.
Well, that got a little heavy. I think I’ve had that brewing up for a while, and until now I’ve struggled for the words. Anyway, thanks for sticking with me this far! If you haven’t seen BlacKkKlansman then please, please change that: if you only watch one film for the rest of 2021, make it this one. It's also on Netflix, so you've no excuses!
I wish I could promise something cheerier for next time, but sadly I don’t think I’ll be able to. America isn’t alone in having issues with discrimination, racism and populism, so next time I’m going to be looking at something that grapples with those problems in the UK. Until then, keep yourselves safe! I’ll see you soon.
Images: Focus Features/Universal