SCHOOL DAZE: An Exploration of Race, Gender and Class Politics
SONYWhile it’s tempting to look at Spike Lee’s 1988 sophomore feature as a harbinger of black-led comedies to come – such as 1994’s The Best Man – or even as an inspiration to Richard Linklater’s similarly loose and slice-of-life-esque Dazed and Confused (1993), the truth is that School Daze is a singular exploration of race, gender and class politics on an all-black campus.
Set at the fictional Mission College, but filmed at and based on real-life historically black colleges like Spelman and Morehouse, Lee’s film follows the lives of several students on homecoming weekend as they grapple with the issue of divesting from South Africa during this time of apartheid. Dap (Laurence Fishburne), a socially-conscious student (his motto: “Uplift the race”), wants to divest and organises various marches and demonstrations around campus. Directly opposing him is Giancarlo Esposito’s Julian, the leader of a fraternity as well as a controlling misogynist.
The film has no real plotlines other than the antagonism between Dap and Julian and the attempts by Lee’s character, Half-Pint, to pledge into Julian’s fraternity. However, through the film’s almost observational style – at least when compared to his debut’s kineticism – Lee is able to focus his viewers’ attention on the intersectional debates and moral quandaries of his characters.
The themes that Lee addresses in School Daze are varied and important, but what sets the film apart are the scarcity of those themes in mainstream movies and the way in which Lee tackles them. There are few films that tackle colourism; there are fewer still that tackle it in such flamboyant manner. An entire early sequence in the film is a musical number titled “Straight and Nappy”, during which a lighter-skinned, straighter-haired group of women clashes with a darker-skinned, curlier-haired cohort. It’s on-the-nose, perhaps, but it exhibits such youthful energy and audacity that one can’t help but admire its straightforwardness. It is also a necessity due to the lack of diversity within most high school or college-set films.
Most high school and college movies are full of white characters, token black characters and precious little to say about society. Lee’s film is quite the opposite and can almost be seen as a call-to-action for more films to be made that bring up issues of race and prejudice and gender. It’s one thing for a movie to have a diverse cast, but it’s another thing entirely to directly address issues within the community it is about.
Another such issue is that of class. Most of the central characters are somewhat affluent due to the fact that they are in college. In one crucial scene, Dap and several other characters encounter Samuel L. Jackson (in a cameo) at a restaurant. Jackson’s character essentially tells them to get off of their high horses, that he is no different from them even though he never went to college, and that they think they’re white because of the way they act. As delivered by Jackson, what could have been a random sidetrack becomes a memorable moment that sticks with the characters and the audience for the rest of the film. Only Lee would interrogate the reason for his characters being where they are.
In typical Lee fashion, the director never provides an easy answer to the questions he asks. Fishburne is the protagonist, and while the audience, for the most part, is supposed to side with him, an interesting point is brought up when his girlfriend asks him if he is only sleeping with her because she’s the darkest-skinned woman in the school. It’s a complicated proposition because, while Julian’s light-skinned fratboys are more or less seen as villains, isn’t some of what Dap does prejudiced as well, albeit in a different way? Lee never shies away from the tough questions and that maturity is on even better display in the way the director approaches gender in his film.
After an immature rape scene in She’s Gotta Have It, Lee’s debut, the prolific filmmaker seems to have learned better in this film. While he is often criticized for writing comparatively weaker female characters, and the men are certainly in the foreground in School Daze, Lee subtly indicates the misogynistic undertones of frat society and the gravitas of consent at the end of his film. When Half-Pint sleeps with Julian’s girlfriend as part of his hazing ritual in a disturbing scene, instead of making light of the scene like in She’s Gotta Have It, the event instead becomes an insight into the manipulation of women by powerful men and a catalyst for Dap’s final wake-up call.
Julian, who wanted to break up with Jane for no valid reason in the first place, tells her to sleep with Half-Pint. If she didn’t, he would have broke up with her for not sleeping with him. And when she inevitably does to please Julian, he still gets mad at her and breaks up with her, claiming he never told her to do so in the first place. It’s a heartbreaking, disgusting scene that cements Julian’s villainous status and makes an effective commentary on power dynamics in relation to gender.
However, the second thing that Lee does – and perhaps the more important one – is make the aftermath of this event the penultimate scene in the movie. When Half-Pint proudly tells Dap what happened, Dap becomes angry, curses at Half-Pint and tells him off. After Half-Pint leaves, Bill Lee’s sumptuous score kicks in and the camera slowly revolves around Fishburne’s face as light is thrown onto it. An idea is formed.
The final, immortal scene, where Fishburne desperately urges the college’s residents to “wake up” amidst a backdrop of golden early-morning sun, is one of the most powerful in Lee’s filmography. It’s a surrealistic scene capped by a fourth wall break for the ages. Fishburne isn’t only telling his peers to wake up to the plight of brothers and sisters in South Africa or the homegrown sexism on their own campus. He is standing in for Spike Lee, who is telling his audience to “Please, wake up.”
Looking back on School Daze more than 30 years later, it becomes sadly evident that Lee’s call-to-action, his wake-up call, was never heeded. His film is still one of the only high school or college-set films with an all or even mostly black cast. His film is still one of the only of its genre – or any genre, for that matter – to address colourism, classism or how sexism relate to the former two. And just like the movies have failed to address these issues, so has society as a whole. It’s a pity that nobody heard Spike Lee’s wake-up call, because the world would be a better place if they had.
