Discussion about the HELP

You're trying to make a political statement and that's the same mistake Lee has made for the past 30 years. It was interesting when he did it 30 years ago, but in time it became tedious because in time it became obvious he wasn't grown as an artist.

The bottom line is this: young artists can learn more from The Help than all of Lee's films combined. They can also learn more about the black experience.

Lee has hurt black filmmaking. He could have leveraged his moderate success to create like Bollywood but instead he became a sociopath. It might have been about "unity" on paper, but the truth is it was always about Spike Lee.

I'm talking about the Spike Lee who goes to basketball games and makes a fool of himself yelling and screaming. That's not unity, that's a little man with issues.

And how can he even mention the word unity when he goes out of his way to attack Perry?

Spike Lee is a sociopath, don't be fooled by his rhetoric or the subject matter of his movies. He's a nut who's outlived his usefulness and we now have The Help to prove this because now it's abundantly clear The Help is a movie about black people far better than anything Lee could have made.

-Prof Marvel

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A Response:

No man is perfect. Therefore, you are accurate to make it known that some of Spike Lee’s conduct is unbecoming and wrong. I don’t specifically justify any of his errors, but he has done some legitimate actions for the African American community. These actions are opposing police brutality, opposing the excess corruption by the powers that be during the Hurricane Katrina debacle, etc. I disagree with you in placing the Help film as some Holy Grail for us wayward blacks must follow into going into the Promised Land. If we want to go into the Promised Land, then we need unity, jobs, health improvement, public & private assistance, self sufficiency long term, and a promotion of real black African culture. That may be your interpretation of the film. That is not mine. I don’t conceive it a sin nor obtusely wrong to show a political measure in certain films. I’m a political guy, so I see no issue with it. The reason is that some films with political statements can arouse curiosity, to promote debate, and inspire forthright reforms in society. Spike Lee is incorrect to have egoism at times, but he is right to arose political debates and inspire a focus on reforming black community (even via angering establishment figures). Young artists can learn from a wide spectrum of filmmakers and many artists beyond Spike, Perry, and other people. The Help only deals with a certain time of the black experience. The black experience is bigger than the Help. You have some vendetta against Spike since Malcolm X and other Spike Lee film trumps The HELP on an enumerable amount of levels.
As I’ve frequently outlined here, we are more than “The HELP” and we should be more than that.

His criticism about Tyler Perry should be made into context. It was one criticism during one time about the content of his filmmaking. You can agree or disagree with his criticism. Yet, it wasn’t a personal attack on his life, not a personal assault at his manhood, and not a personal swipe at his family. Other folks act like Spike called the man every name under the sun. Others such Boondocks criticized Tyler Perry much worse than Spike Lee and Tyler doesn’t mention that. Tyler claims to be some religious zen master, but he uses profanity in his plays and acts like a circus clown in his movies (to his credit, he does promote jobs for his people. Some of his films have an inspirational message). You are right that other black filmmakers should come up since Spike Lee is one man. No one man is superior to all of us brothers and sisters. We have the right to promote our interests and even potentially have a better cinema legacy than Spike. Yet, the HELP isn’t the black Holy grail.

-By Timothy