Red Hook Summer: On Post-Soul Culture And Spike Lee Talkin’ Smack

In Red Hook, Lee maintains his post-soul agenda while taking a dig at some of the most popular aesthetic values of the moment. While Perry and Lee are concerned with similar topics (religion, class, generational rifts), Lee’s main point of contention seems to be with Perry’s reaching back into the shaming and muddied waters of minstrelsy, reviving the black mammy, jezebel, and preacher types in various ways.

The film’s insistence on complicating the tradition and how it is used in the black community could be interpreted as direct commentary on what Lee and others have found offensive about Perry’s films. As a symbol of post-soul culture, Flik is openly atheist and disconnected from the tradition of the black church. He sees the world not through religion but through the lens of technology; his iPad serves as his means to record and interact with his environment. Enoch, however, uses the tradition of the black church as a veil to hide behind.

What Flik and Enoch do have in common is a desired sense of freedom. In order to achieve this, both characters must learn to navigate the circumstances of their past and present. By the end of the film, Lee makes it abundantly clear that, for those seeking redemption, the church is not the answer.

Red Hook Summer co-writer James McBride. Courtesy: The Toledo Blade.

Another piece of the puzzle lies in how the film is written. In online reviews, there has been little mention of the voice and influence of McBride, who co-wrote and produced the film and is the author of the best-selling memoir The Color of Water. In many ways, Red Hook appears to be loosely based upon the life experiences of McBride, who grew up in the titular projects, the son of a black reverend and a white Jewish woman who, as he describes in the book, refused to acknowledge her whiteness; when he asked her if she was white, he wrote, she answered, “I’m light-skinned.” The confusion caused by her evasiveness ultimately leads him along a search to define his racial identity and family history.

The portrait we get of McBride in his memoir most certainly reflects the multiple intersections of identity that characterize the post-soul individual. Both in the film and McBride’s life, both the desire to be free from identity categories as well as the desire to conceal identity are present.

Ultimately, Red Hook and Lee achieve more than just trash talking. We’re left with food for thought on the ways tradition and faith are employed within the African American community. The film begs the question of where black folks turn when traditional spaces for achieving personal and spiritual freedom fail or cease to exist. Lee’s cinematic sermon in the film extends a message that has been appearing in post-soul artistic production for decades: that we must locate freedom within ourselves. Red Hook may very well offer more freedom to its creators than to its viewers. Instead of taking to vicious attacks of Tyler Perry or the Hollywood establishment, Lee puts post-soul freedom into practice. He lets go of trying to control the industry and instead controls himself.

In her own post-soul work, The Healing, author Gayle Jones may summarize the message Lee wanted to send with this movie: ”Some people think that freedom is to manage everybody but theyself,” she writes. “Learn to manage yourself. That is the key to freedom.” An excellent bit of wisdom, not only for those watching films but also those making them.

Naomi Extra is a Cave Canem poet and contributing editor for Kweli Journal. She is also a full time New York City public school teacher. Her writings can be found in The Feminist Wire and on the blog Indigo + Cypress.

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