Carbetbagger, Spike Lee, makes lousy documentary
by Owen Courrèges · 08/17/2006 7:00 amOr perhaps I should call it a blackumentary, based on this review from the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
My word is “unfinished,” even at four hours.
“When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” locks in on the black Katrina experience, which should not come as a surprise to anybody who knows Lee’s filmmaking career
As such, “Levees” tells only half the story. Or, rather, 67.3 percent of it.
Frequently brilliantly, but still.
The tragic story of black New Orleans trapped in Katrina’s path has found a supreme chronicler, but the flooded-out residents of Lakeview or Old Metairie who attend tonight’s sold-out premiere at New Orleans Arena will spend all night sitting on a hard plastic chair and then wonder: Where am I in this?
Perhaps they’ll be coming attractions. Lee has said he’d like to make “Levees” the first installment of a series of films about the ongoing battle to save New Orleans.
Yeah, that’s likely.
It’s actually worse than that. Although New Orleans is more than two-thirds black, unincorporated suburbs are larely white. Moreover, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, also mostly white, was likewise devestated. Does Spike Lee plan an installment about that? Unlikely.
The overall structure is chronological, but Lee takes jogs in time to make editorial points.
The filmmaker is occasionally heard asking off-camera questions, but there is no narrator, just the voices of various witnesses both well-known and not.
Of them, standouts include Herbert Freeman Jr., whose mother died in a wheelchair outside the convention center; author Michael Eric Dyson, who is ruthless in recounting Condoleezza Rice’s New York City shoe-shopping-and-evening-at-the-theater getaway while Ethel Freeman sat dying in the heat; and WWL talk radio host Garland Robinette, whose emotions still roil a full year after he narrated Katrina’s deadly fly-by live on the air.
What the HECK does Condelezza Rice have to do with hurricane disaster relief? She’s Secretary of State, and therefore her position has absolutely NOTHING to do with Katrina. Furthermore, I consider myself a compassionate person, but when disaster is happening more than a thousand miles away, I don’t expect everyone to stay home and weep. I go out. I have fun. It’s a cheap shot by Spike Lee against a successful black female who happens to be Republican, and is thus unfairly slandered by a New York filmmaker who knows zilch about life in the south. It’s cowardly and it’s wrong.
But the film’s most troubling passage has been anticipated since HBO announced that Lee would make it. Early in the opening act, several witnesses swear they heard explosions before the Florida Avenue breach.
Refutations are made in follow-up sound bites, but the overall takeaway is that intentional levee destruction might’ve, could’ve, probably happened.
For both Katrina and Betsy.
There is value in exploring how such impressions are made and last, but absent any real evidence beyond inexpert testimony — and there is no evidence introduced in the film — such notions must be presented as folklore and nothing more.
Here, they’re presented as likely fact, in a confusing sequence of quotes and clips that mix references to Katrina and Betsy with the one time there actually was an intentional levee destruction, during the Mississippi River flood of 1927. That breach inundated St. Bernard Parish.
You know what’s funny? St. Berhard Parish is over 87% white, which is greater than the U.S. as a whole. So much for the “white man blowing up the levees to keep the black man down” theory.
Really, though — anybody who lends the slightest credence to the notion that the levees were intentionally blown up to inundate black neighborhoods is, in my humble opinion, a raging, sociopathic moron. There’s no evidence to support the idea, and there’s no logic behind it. Spike Lee embarasses himself.
Later, a pastor from New York states as fact that “a master plan” has been put in place by “Trump land-grabbers” to “bulldoze down the 9th Ward.”
A quote from Nagin denying that possibility comes just a few seconds after, but again, someone is allowed to make an explosive charge for which no evidence is evident.
You know, “Trump land-grabbers” aren’t stupid. They know that the 9th Ward is a poor place to build upscale housing. I’ve heard exactly NOTHING about developers building upscale housing in the 9th Ward. And why would they? It’s an economically-depressed area, with a history of high crime, that isn’t particularly close to downtown.
But the allies of New Orleans’ enemies will obsess over the few sequences that forgo known facts, allowing them to too easily overlook the sweetness and sadness in Wendell Pierce’s eyes when he talks about how his father paid insurance on that little house for 50 years and got nothing.
Ok, ya lost me. We’re supposed to ignore the crazed, conspiracist crap because Spike Lee films some touching, heartfelt scenes? Cry me a river. It’s like saying we should ignore the terrible plot of Van Helsing because it had some pretty cool special effects. It’s impossible to ignore Lee’s tendency to engage in race-baiting, and believing that doesn’t make me an enemy of New Orleans.
Spike Lee made a horrible, biased documentary. That’s the story here. Let’s leave it at that.
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Spike this! Firstest!
Lee is a punk and has been on my boycott list along with the Penns and Clooneys of the world. Not one dime of mine ever goes towards these morons.
Owen you asked the question…
What she has to do with it is she is black and there fore the person that they will want to come running to their rescue even if it is not her job.
Why does anyone take that little angry dwarf seriously? His movies suck! I can’t think a good one off the top of my head. I guess being angry and black qualifies you to do anything!
Why doesn’t anyone point out that these people now have more opportunity to make something of themselves. Better than sitting on the porch playing dominoes at 2′00 in the morning in a NOLA ghetto. The entitlement mentality has all but destroyed black Americans. They should marginalize Spike Lee and quit worshipping sports figures as heroes. Condie, Colin, JC Watts, Alan Keyes, Thomas Sowell, Ward Connerly…. on and on but nooooo….. Gimmie Snoop Dogg and some basket ball player. I guess sitting on the porch smoking a blunt and waiting for the gov’t check is easier than working for some white devil!
http://www.watsoncrombie.com/chapel_hill_halloween_2005/crackhead_tyrone.jpg
It’s amazing how these “celebrity” types think their public status equates to their intelligence and therefore everybody should listen to them. They have the right to their own opinions but don’t use your celebrity status as a platform to preach to the rest of us.
Whats really funny is in 10 years NO is going to be famous for its fajitas and frijoles. The Cajun sound will be replaced with mariachis. Boudreaux jokes will now be Jose jokes.
Faster, this is what happens when the “sittin’ on the porch smokin’ a blunt and playing dominos” crowd gets bored…
It’s that danged weather machine!
“Weatherman’s theory of mobsters causing Katrina”
http://www.tdn.com/articles/2005/09/21/nation_world/news22.txt
More weather machine:
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=8126
jimb
I’ve seen that… it’s hilarious! It’s a crackhead ninja hiding in the bushes!!
“Spike Lee makes a biased film”
color me totaly non surprised!
#8 & #9 It kinda scares me that these incredibly stupid in-DUH-ividuals might be procreating.
Somebody must have been leaking info again. Every Conservative knows that we’re not supposed to talk about the fact that Karl Rove procured the weather machine technology from Russia years ago, and has been using in test runs to perfect its operation.
[Looks angrily at fasternu]
“SEIZE HIM! HE KNOWS TOO MUCH!”
Owen, just because you and your lovely bride live in New Orleans doesn’t give you the right to use logic and facts in a debate with libeals.
Whoever is unintelligent enough to follow and believe in the ideaology of some ninkompoop celebrity (including those who are celebrity directors, filmmakers, etc.), is then on the same level of the idiot.
I happened to see this comment from ‘fasternu426′ and thought it was total nonsense. This poster said:
“The entitlement mentality has all but destroyed black Americans. They should marginalize Spike Lee and quit worshipping sports figures as heroes. Condie, Colin, JC Watts, Alan Keyes, Thomas Sowell, Ward Connerly…”
First of all, that is a huge generalization to imply that black americans have an entitlement mentality. I think that’s something that’s thrown around in the press, especially talk radio, but I’ve never meant a single black person who’s had that mentality. I’m sure some do, but then again, I’ve met rich white people who have that same mentality. So, if you want criticize a few blacks for having that mentality, make it an equal criticism and criticize other races as well. Secondly, many people in our society, as a whole, no matter what race, seem to worship celebrities. And I hope you’re not implying that blacks should worship people like Alan Keyes. People shouldn’t be worshipped period. And just b/c people are successful doesn’t mean you have to see them as role models. You have to look at their character and what they stand for too, and I personally wouldn’t hold up people like Keyes to be admired.
#16 vlou, I referr you to #7 jimb’s video link…which by the way beat out all of Spike Lee’s entries and won the emmy for best creative use of a scaffolding extender.
“I’ve never meant a single black person who’s had that mentality”
Really?
You must not get out much. I’ve seen plenty. I’ve worked with plenty. I’ve worked with piece of 5678 whites too. It’s just that blacks in this country tend to throw rocks at those that want them to get off the government plantation. It’s not gospel, just IMHO. I go by what I’ve seen and I’ve seen quite a bit. I’ve seen white people that were too lazy to pee on themselves if they cought on fire. I put them in the same category. But this thread is about blacks and Katrina and how Stank Lee wants to blame someone and throw mud on the present office holder at 1200 Pa ave.
“So, if you want criticize a few blacks for having that mentality”
It ain’t a few blacks. It’s a whole city of them that should have fled before the water rose. Then they whined and beeyoched when they wre brought into the astrodome and weren’t given a hot meal instead of an MRE. People like Spike Lee just take advantage of this to promote their agenda. How many has he actually helped?