BLACKkKLANSMAN: Taking the Power Back
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Even after a career full of astonishingly powerful and impactful films, Blackkklansman is perhaps Spike Lee’s most hard-hitting expose on not only the racism of the time period displayed in the film, but the racism that remains rampant in modern society. Based on the book Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime written by Ron Stallworth, Spike Lee almost thirty years on from Do the Right Thing once again tells a gripping and viciously entertaining story, while in turn pushing viewers to see the world differently.
Ron Stallworth’s (John David Washington) infiltration of the Klu Klux Klan during the 1970s is achieved through a robust undercover operation spanning several weeks and follows both Stallworth and his partner Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) across multiple locales. Yet the film repeatedly returns to Stallworth’s over the phone conversations with members of the Klan and his use of a fabricated ‘white-voice’. Despite Stallworth not overtly altering his voice to the extent shown in another film that uses the ‘white-voice’ with director Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, the change is certainly there. A certainty that is made by the following scenes between Stallworth and Chief Bridges (Robert John Burke) in which the Chief expresses his worry of Stallworth’s voice being a giveaway, with Stallworth retorting "Some of us can speak Kings English, others speak Jive. Ron Stallworth here happens to be fluent in both”. The scenes in which Ron takes up the white voice were pushed from the initial trailer of the film as being one of the films highlights, most likely due to the comedic tone being an easier sell than the films harder hitting moments. Of course, these scenes are based in fact with said conversations being adapted from the real events described in the book. However, they serve another purpose within Spike Lee’s film: they display Stallworth taking the power of his voice back.
To try to provide a comprehensive history of the ways in which people of colour have had their own voice taken away from them through decades of systematic racism would be almost impossible. Yet, Blackkklansman successfully addresses several ways in which this process happened, a key one being through racist media and its relationship within contemporary times. From the films jarring opening scene from the legendary Gone with the Wind to one of the most infamous films of all time The Birth of a Nation being referenced extensively throughout, past media is a constant throughout the narrative, yet the film never seeks to openly criticise these films. This could be duly in part to Lee’s own personal feelings towards the films referenced, with the director commenting on the recent discussions surrounding the place a film like Gone with the Wind has in modern society due to its glorification of slavery. In an interview with The View, Lee himself commented that these films “should be seen”, going on to state that he teaches these films during his own classes that he leads.
The way in which Blackkklansman tackles the idea of the black voice being lost over time is something Lee previously tackled in one of his most ferocious features to date with 2000s Bamboozled. A film in which a present-day TV studio decides to bring back the minstrel shows except in this instance they cast black actors in black-face, rather than the original shows which opted for white actors with black-face. While Bamboozled may express the idea of the voice being taken back from the oppressors in a far more aggressive way, Blackkklansman shows that with Stallworth’s ability to adapt his voice based on the person he is speaking too, he has learned to find the weaknesses in people like Duke’s fragile racist identity, an identity that is suggested to have been constructed by media. An extensive scene displaying the Klan watching The Birth of a Nation as they cheer and applaud the lies that fuel their own deep, yet completely unwarranted hatred is edited in parallel with a scene in which Harry Belafonte details the horrific lynching of Jesse Washington in 1916. The contrast between the absolutely genuine horror that the black community has experienced against the fabricated oppression that Duke and his peers have constructed by using The Birth of a Nation to merely intensify this false narrative, enhances the way in which Lee has employed an authentic voice in Harry Belafonte within the film to highlight the ignorance of the Klan and those with racists beliefs as a whole. Yet as Lee suggests, films akin to The Birth of a Nation need to be seen. Society must understand how media has historically taken away voices from people of colour, often done in a bid to mock them. To simply wipe the slate clean and pretend that these pieces of media do not exist would suggest that the oppression displayed within the media never existed to begin with, as if the power was never taken away.
By the time the film reaches the concluding moments, Stallworth fully expresses his ability to take back the power of his voice as his over the phone conversation with Klan leader David Duke ends with Stallworth finally giving the game away. By reciting every racist remark that would be common vernacular for Duke, shows the sheer ignorance of the leader as well as allowing Stallworth to take the power away from these words, while leaving Duke quite literally speechless.
