{"id":142296,"date":"2021-10-20T16:41:12","date_gmt":"2021-10-20T20:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=142296"},"modified":"2021-10-22T13:38:37","modified_gmt":"2021-10-22T17:38:37","slug":"charles-nero-this-spike-lee-film-is-an-awesome-takedown-of-the-interracial-buddy-film-genre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2021\/10\/20\/charles-nero-this-spike-lee-film-is-an-awesome-takedown-of-the-interracial-buddy-film-genre\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Nero: This Spike Lee film is an ‘awesome takedown’ of the interracial buddy film genre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Billions in box office sales tell a Hollywood tale: Movies about Black and white buddies teaming up to defeat bad guys have been a crowd favorite since the 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether it\u2019s Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder foiling kidnappers in Silver Streak<\/em>, or Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte taking down a depraved killer in 48 Hrs., <\/em>the experience of watching interracial buddy films \u2014 \u201cgood guys overturning the bad ones” \u2014 gives us pleasure, says Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Audiences expect to see, and man do they get, rousing displays of \u201cmanliness, cooperation, love, and affection between males,\u201d however chaste and non-sexual. In these films, like In the Heat of the Night<\/em>, Philadelphia<\/em>, and Men in Black<\/em>, eradicating evil, whether racism, homophobia, or aliens from outer space, is simple, Nero says. \u201cAs simple as black and white men becoming friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, that\u2019s not just simplistic, but \u201ca lie,\u201d says Nero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Benjamin
Charles Nero, photographed at an Oct. 14, 2021, campus event celebrating the opening of Bonney Science Center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The recipient of the 2021 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, Nero delivered his wide-ranging insights into the popularity and problems of interracial buddy films during a recent Bates talk, culminating with an analysis of why Spike Lee’s 2018 BlacKkKlansman<\/em> is an \u201cawesome and subversive takedown\u201d of the genre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Established in 1985, the Kroepsch Award honors faculty for their performance in teaching. A member of the Bates faculty since 1991, Nero specializes in film, literary, and cultural studies. He is the longtime chair of the college\u2019s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Committee and a member of the Africana program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Held in Keck classroom and streamed live via Zoom on Sept. 27, Nero’s Kroepsch Lecture drew Zoom questions from several of Nero’s alumni students, including one from Nero’s earliest years as a Bates professor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forget the \u201cfierce urgency of now\u201d: Hollywood was telling Black Americans to just wait.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The interracial buddy film dates to the Cold War after World War II. Hollywood had joined the fight against the perceived Red peril, in the film lot through blacklists and on the screen, producing movies with anti-Communist themes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first few, such as 1949\u2019s Home of the Brave<\/em> and 1951\u2019s The Steel Helmet<\/em> and Bright Victory<\/em> introduced a familiar trope, the \u201cmultiracial, multifaith, and multi-ethnic troupe of American soldiers who bond with each other to combat and defeat a Communist enemy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pivotal moment occurs in Steel Helmet<\/em> when a Communist North Korean army officer (Harold Fong) asks the Black soldier (James Edward) why he\u2019s loyal to racist, Jim Crow America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe response Edwards gives is one about patience,\u201d Nero explains. \u201cThe African American soldier professes loyalty to an American exceptionalism. America as a nation will eventually abandon its white supremacy and become a welcoming place for him. The African American man just has to be patient because America is destined to become better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With interracial buddy films, Hollywood discovered a way to \u201csecure Black American loyalty in the fight against Communist appeals to people of color in the U.S. and abroad,\u201d explains Nero. Forget the \u201cfierce urgency of now\u201d: Hollywood was telling Black Americans to just wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that message, Hollywood had laid the groundwork for a new genre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones<\/em>, Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis received Academy Award nominations for their roles as convicts on the lam, chained together. \u201cInitially they hate each other \u2014 Curtis\u2019 character was a working-class racist,\u201d Nero explains. \u201cBut since the two were chained together, they have to work together to evade capture, as the movie endlessly<\/em> shows us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/lite-youtube>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t
Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in the interracial buddy film The Defiant Ones<\/em>. “Since the two were chained together, they have to work together to evade capture, as the movie endlessly<\/em> shows us,” says Nero.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n

The messages sent by The Defiant Ones<\/em> and subsequent interracial buddy films are both simplistic and untrue because they reduce racism and white supremacy to something \u201cone-dimensional, an internal<\/em> state,\u201d explains Nero, when we know that racism and white supremacy are institutional and systemic, not internal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings us to Spike Lee\u2019s BlacKkKlansman, <\/em>based on the true story of a Black police officer in Colorado Springs, Colo., who sets out to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, helped out by a white undercover officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt has the appearance of an interracial buddy film,\u201d says Nero, but instead, Lee delivers an \u201cawesome takedown\u201d of the genre. One tipoff that this isn\u2019t your father\u2019s interracial buddy film is a scene showing KKK members watching and cheering D.W. Griffith\u2019s Birth of a Nation<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2021
Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies, gestures during his Kroepsch Lecture on Sept. 27 in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Room. Behind Nero, whose talk heavily referenced Spike Lee\u2019s BlacKkKlansman<\/em>, is a projected still from Lee\u2019s School Daze<\/em>. In the foreground is Nero\u2019s husband, Professor of Hispanic Studies Baltasar Fra-Molinero. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)
 
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Birth of a Nation <\/em>suggests that interracial friendship (between a Northern abolitionist and his mixed-race protege) will create a national catastrophe that only the Ku Klux Klan can solve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By including the scene, Lee is \u201cexposing the lie about interracial friendship in the national narrative. Birth of a Nation<\/em>\u2019s message about interracial friendship \u2014 that it will create catastrophe \u2014 is a lie just as the buddy film\u2019s message, that interracial friendship is a \u201cgodsend that will end racism and white supremacy,\u201d is a lie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Lee forewarns viewers that lies are afoot and that he\u2019s out to disrupt a familiar genre, BlacKkKlansman<\/em> seems to \u201cend\u201d in the familiar way. \u201cBlack and white men as friends. They can all sit down as friends and enjoy a beer. All is right in the world. The wicked have been punished. Order is restored.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But no, it\u2019s not over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using one of his cinematic trademarks, the double-dolly shot, Lee creates a \u201csurreal moment,\u201d in which two Black characters, Ron Stallworth and Patrice Dumas, with guns drawn, seem to float down a hallway and into the future. They see a cross is burning. The KKK is still around. There\u2019s a rally, real scenes of the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., reminding us of the endless cycle of racism.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/lite-youtube>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t
The “double-dolly” scene from BlacKkKlansman<\/em>.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n

Their passage down the hallway \u201cevokes the image of the Door of No Return<\/a>, from which enslaved Black people left the European fortresses of West Africa for America,\u201d Nero says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an \u201cexhilarating moment of cinematic realism\u201d as director Lee \u201cstamps the Black experience onto the interracial buddy film. In this Black experience, Lee evokes capture and Middle Passage, enslavement and white supremacy in America, as a never-ending cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh gosh! Adam!\u201d Nero exclaimed, clearly pleased. \u201cThat\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During the post-talk Q&A, one question came from Adam Gaynor ’96, a student of Nero’s from, as he said with a chuckle, “the last century.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh gosh! Adam!\u201d Nero exclaimed, clearly pleased, after hearing that Gaynor had asked a question. \u201cThat\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaynor asked Nero his thoughts about why the film would have the character Flip Zimmerman be Jewish when in real life the white cop was not Jewish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without going into Spike Lee\u2019s motivations, Nero noted that Zimmerman being a Jew makes his entry into the KKK more interesting. Zimmerman \u201cis passing,\u201d Nero said. \u201cHe and Ron have a conversation about what it means to be Jewish. Ron has to think about his own identity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked about his interest in watching Nero’s talk, Gaynor said, “I wouldn\u2019t miss an opportunity to listen to Charles lecture \u2014 he’s one of a kind.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaynor has spent most of his career in education, and is now a founding partner of Plan A Advisors, a consulting firm for nonprofits. He earned his doctorate from New York University in education and Jewish studies. Speaking from that breadth of experience, Gaynor calls Nero “an educator, scholar, and mentor par excellence<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Bates, Gaynor was deeply involved in confronting anti-Semitism, homophobia, and white supremacy. \u201cBates and Maine were anything but welcoming to students of color and Jewish and LGBTQ students,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA core group of faculty of color, including Charles, invested time and energy in mentoring vulnerable students, ultimately helping Bates to retain many of us.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaynor recalls taking Nero\u2019s course \u201cSexuality in the Era of AIDS.\u201d The course\u2019s \u201cextremely challenging material\u201d demanded that students step \u201cfar outside of our comfort zones,\u201d Gaynor recalls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nero was there every step of the way, including taking students on an overnight, off-campus retreat, where he facilitated exercises and discussions, \u201cpunctuated by family-style meals and activities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experience \u201cenabled students to know one another more deeply and to feel more comfortable engaging with the material through trust and vulnerability. It completely transformed the class dynamic for the remainder of the semester.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Assistant
Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture Michael Roman poses a question after Charles Nero’s Kroepsch Lecture on Sept. 27, 2021. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And when it comes to engaging with a film, Nero says it’s possible to watch our favorite films, whether BlacKkKlansman<\/em> or a more typical interracial film like Shawshank Redemption, <\/em>with a critical eye and without having to push aside feelings of pleasure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watching with a critical eye means asking ourselves questions about our pleasures: Why do we enjoy the things we do? Why do interracial buddy films perfectly scratch that itch for so many of us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFilm is a solicitor of pleasure,\u201d Nero says. \u201cOne of my jobs, as an educator, and I take it very seriously, is I want to encourage us, not to reject pleasure, because, you know, I\u2019m a queer person, and I was told that that was just wrong. So, I don\u2019t want you to reject pleasure, I want you to ask questions about your pleasures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And one of the questions we can ask is about the racial implications and dynamics of the movies we enjoy so much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the question is, do we ask ourselves, \u2018How does something like race play out in what I find pleasurable in what I\u2019m going to enjoy?\u2019\u201d Nero said. \u201cToo often, we don\u2019t have those moments to interrogate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interracial buddy films like 48 Hrs. or Men in Black tell us that\u00a0eradicating evil, including racism, is as “simple as black and white men becoming friends,\u201d says Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies. That\u2019s not only simplistic but \u201ca lie.\u201d Here’s why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":142329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11011],"tags":[2132,5091],"class_list":["post-142296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-awards","tag-charles-nero","tag-kroepsch-award-for-excellence-in-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142296"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142363,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142296\/revisions\/142363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}