"Jungle Fever" DVD cover courtesy of Universal Pictures.
pike Lee
cultivated the much-discussed "Jungle Fever" in 1991 and his film explores the
blistering and oft-times painful experiences of hostile public reaction to
intimate relationships between black men and white women in the United States in
particular, and the more general aspects of intimate partnerships between white
men and black women in the U.S. Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra
starred in Mr. Lee's film as the couple who fight the wars of resentment, racism
and retaliation to their presence as lovers by trying to put out the fires from
both Harlem and Bensonhurst in contemporary New York City. "Jungle Fever"
was less about interracial liaisons than viewers are initially led to believe.
Mr. Lee's film was highly shrewd as well as thought-provoking, and its
after-effects were stunning. Samuel L. Jackson won a unique,
specially-made acting award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 for his role as
Mr. Snipes' drug-addled brother, and "Fever" featured the feature film debuts of
both Halle Berry and Queen Latifah, actors who are very much a part of Hollywood
films today.
"Jungle Fever" ignited a lot of passion and fervor and is 180°
to the political right, if you will, of "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner", the 1967
film from Stanley Kramer, which featured Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy and
Katharine Hepburn. The film featured Katharine Houghton as Joanna, a white
woman from a liberal, upper class San Francisco family who falls in love with
Mr. Poitier's medical doctor Dr. Prentice character. The couple wants to
get married and Dr. Prentice is brought home to Joanna's parents (Mr. Tracy and
Ms. Hepburn) who disapprove, as does the family's black cook (Isabel Sanford),
among others.
In the same year of "Dinner"'s release in the U.S., came the United States
Supreme Court decision overturning Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, which
criminalized the act of members of different races marrying each other. In
1958, two residents of the state of Virginia, Richard Loving, a white man, and
Mildred Jeter, a black woman, got married in the District of Columbia.
Upon return to Virginia, their marriage was not recognized by the state, which
declared that the union had violated Virginia's statute. After almost ten
years of journeying through the American legal system, the Lovings' marriage was
upheld by the top court in the land. Until June 12, 1967, when the U.S.
Supreme Court decision (Loving v. Virginia) legalizing interracial
marriages across the country was rendered -- barely 40 years ago -- marriages
between persons of different races were still illegal in 17 U.S. states.
Exactly six months after the June 1967 landmark court decision, "Guess Who's
Coming To Dinner" opened in the U.S. The film won two Academy Awards,
Katharine Hepburn for Best Actress, and William Rose for Best Screenplay.
Isabel Sanford was also nominated but didn't end up in the winner's circle.
Mr. Poitier, who acquitted himself well in a good performance, had won a Best
Actor Oscar several years earlier for "Lilies Of The Field", the 1963 film that
at the time was the only film which an Academy accolade for a lead performance
was awarded to a black man since the Oscars began in the late 1920's. The
next Best Actor Academy Award to be won by a black actor would be presented
almost 40 years later to Denzel Washington in 2002 for "Training Day", and as
Oscar approaches its 80th birthday next February, Jamie Foxx (winning for "Ray"
in 2005) and Forest Whitaker (winning for "The Last King Of Scotland" in 2007)
have been added to the Academy's lead actor winners list of black performers.
"Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" came amidst a swirl of turbulence in 1960's
America. There was violence -- the murders and lynching of blacks in
numerous areas of America, and most especially in the South were proliferating,
exemplified most disturbingly in the bombings of a Birmingham, Alabama church on
September 15, 1963, where four girls were killed. Two months later John F.
Kennedy would be assassinated. Medgar Evers was also assassinated during
that same year. The Civil Rights Act would be passed by the U.S. Congress
during the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential administration, and in June1964,
violence during the voter registration drives in the South, including
Mississippi, claimed the lives of murders of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, who
were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The three had journeyed to
the state to get people to vote. Eight months later in February 1965,
Malcolm X would be assassinated. Dr. Martin Luther King would be
assassinated on April 4, 1968, and in the film a line about Dr. King was removed
from all theatrical prints of "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" shortly after the
news of his untimely death. (The line is now intact in the film's home
video and DVD releases.) Robert Kennedy would also be fatally felled by
assassins bullets just two months after Dr. King.
The poster for the 1967 film.
(Courtesy: Columbia Pictures)
Similarly, "Jungle Fever" arrived during a volatile period in New York City
history. Less than two years before its release, on a warm August evening
in 1989, Yusuf K. Hawkins was with two friends in Bensonhurst, a
then-predominantly white, Italian neighborhood, responding to a newspaper ad for
the sale of a used car. At least thirty white male youths surrounded the
three black men, and killed Mr. Hawkins, with the gunman shooting the
16-year-old at in the heart at point-blank range. The five or six white
youths on trial in court later said that they responded to a threat from a
part-Italian, part-Puerto Rican woman named Gina Feliciano who lived in Bensonhurst, who said that she had a black boyfriend that she was bringing to
the neighborhood who was coming to beat up the white men who had reportedly
harassed her and teased her about her relationship. Only one of the white
youths on trial for Mr. Hawkins' murder was convicted, the gunman, Joey Fama.
Mr. Lee dedicated "Jungle Fever" to Mr. Hawkins, and there is a reference to
some of the events that allegedly surrounded Ms. Feliciano, as well as a mention
of Mr. Hawkins' murder. Earlier, in April 1989, the high-profile Central
Park Jogger Case (a brutal night-time rape and beating of a white female jogger
later named as Tricia Meili, who went public in 2003) exacerbated the city's
already tense racial relations. Mainstream media reports from around the
world, taking their cue from the rabid New York City mainstream press,
repeatedly trumpeted that five black and Hispanic youths ranging in age from 13
to 17 were responsible for the attack on the woman. (Donald Trump had
taken out a full page ad in The New York Times stating that the young men, who
were repeatedly labeled as "animals" and a "wolfpack", be given the death
penalty.)
Subsequently at trial, the five black and Hispanic youths (including one honors
student) were convicted, solely on the videotaped statements that they gave
police -- statements that the young men said were coerced via intimidation by
police detectives. No physical evidence linked the young men to the crime.
In 2002 a judge overturned the convictions (owing to a confession made by the
man who actually committed the rape of Ms. Meili -- a serial rapist and murderer
named Matias Reyes -- whose DNA was the only such evidence found at the crime
scene), but by then it was far too late. The young men served prison
sentences ranging from 5 to 13 years. (In 2003, the young men sued the
City of New York, its police department and the Manhattan District Attorney's
Office.) And in 1988, Tawana Brawley, a black woman, had been publicly
excoriated when stating that a white district attorney in Westchester, New York
(Steven Pagones) and a police officer raped her. Many white and black
members of the public and most of the mainstream media expressed doubt about Ms.
Brawley's statements, and a grand jury was not given enough evidence to fully
determine whether the New York State District Attorney Robert Abrams could
indict Mr. Pagones, and therefore decided not to indict, based on a "no true
bill" vote. Mr. Lee references the Brawley case in his film "Do The Right
Thing" (where the wall graffiti "Tawana Told The Truth!" is emblazoned.)
And just three months before the release of "Jungle Fever", the videotaped
beating of Rodney King by several white Los Angeles police caused outrage and
consternation across the U.S., in much the same way that the acquittal of O.J.
Simpson in 1995 during his trial for the murder of his then-wife Nicole Brown
Simpson did -- among whites in general, but particularly among white Southern
Californians.
So for both American films, a climate swirled around them in the society that
made their releases that much more eagerly awaited. While Stanley Kramer's
"Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" made the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films
of All Time List several years ago, Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" has endured and
is ranked among the director's strongest and most commercially successful films.
In Mr. Lee's film, people colorfully give voice to sentiments about intimate
relationships and marriages between the races that a majority of Americans keep
largely to themselves. At times the film exposes powerful and explosive
feelings, truths, misunderstandings, stereotypes, stigmas and complexities,
galvanizing moviegoers to explore the issues of race, sex and class in America.
One of the most noteworthy scenes in "Jungle Fever" occurs midway through the
film and features a group of black women candidly expressing their views about
black men and interracial relationships. The scene, unscripted and
unrehearsed, is one of the best and most honest scenes that Spike Lee has let
play out in any of his non-documentary feature films. Another impressive
scene is the Taj Mahal sequence featuring Mr. Jackson and Ms. Berry, shot by
cinematographer Ernest Dickerson. The sequence is haunting to watch on the
big screen, with Stevie Wonder's "Living For The City" echoing eerily and
cacophonously throughout.
Mr. Wonder wrote a soundtrack of songs especially for "Jungle Fever" and Mr. Lee
practically begged the megastar singing legend for permission to use the entire
recording of his classic "Living For The City" for the aforementioned Taj Mahal
scene. During the end credits of the film, Mr. Wonder's sorrowful and
urgent "Feeding Off The Love Of The Land" plays in both audio and lyric form.
The lyric, isn't love to be admired/has the good in man expired could
take on numerous meanings including the need for "tolerance" of love among and
between people of all backgrounds -- hence the idea that all aspects of love
among adults should be given societal approval regardless -- or the notion that
love as an entity is paramount -- and the only singular thing that truly
matters.
Where "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" was a sunnier, subtle but occasionally
acidic look at black-white love and marriage in America, seen ostensibly from a
white liberal perspective and sensibility, "Jungle Fever" is more exacting and
direct, throwing the myths about black men and white women at its audience.
There is no escape - and you are left to face and explore your own feelings
about these issues. Just as "Dinner" had its cinematic legends in Hepburn
and Tracy (who was ailing at the time the film was being made), "Fever" has its
cinematic legends in Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, towers of humanity on the big
screen and off it. Mr. Davis passed away in 2005, and Ms. Dee, who had
been married to Davis since the late 1940's, was left to soldier on. (The
couple also appeared together in Mr. Lee's "Do The Right Thing" in 1989.)
Ms. Dee will next be seen in "American Gangster", which opens next month in the
U.S., as the mother of Frank Lucas, the real-life 1970's Harlem drug-dealing
business magnate played by Denzel Washington.
The selected lyrics above are from Stevie Wonder's song "Feeding Off The Love
Of The Land", whose entire lyrics are played out in word and audio during the
end credits of Spike Lee's 1991 film "Jungle Fever", which tackled the thorny
hotbed of love and intimacy between blacks and whites.
There are other Hollywood films that have taken on the intimacies between
black and white over the years -- and the mere mention of the words "black",
"white" or "interracial" when discussing or exploring the thorny issues of race
relations -- a long and ever-present powder-keg in American society -- may
appear balkanizing or polarizing. The way that the discussions of such
issues are conducted in American society may be represented the same or very
differently in films released in Hollywood. Some may view the prism of
so-called "interracial" love or marriage as just that -- a prism -- a narrow
filter that exempts most if not all other groups of people. After all,
what about intimate relationships between other races (Asians, Latinos, etc?)
Where white-Asian romantic intimate relationships depicted in Hollywood films
are concerned, there is scarcely the kind of controversy that typically attends
black-white romantic relationships. One clear and obvious reason for the
difference in the intensity of controversy is the absence in white-Asian
intimate encounters of the backdrop of the long history of sexual relations
(forced and consensual) that have occurred between blacks and whites long before
America became the United States (i.e., enslavement of blacks by white
colonialists.)
At the risk of being presumptuous, the romantic relationships between white men
and Asian women on the big screen in Hollywood (and off it in American society
at large) are viewed in some quarters as so ubiquitous and accepted (at least in
the mainstream American media - via television and film) that there appears to
be barely a raised eyebrow among members of the movie-going public. For
example, no audible hackles or objections can be heard when Woody Harrelson and
Lucy Liu are paired up on the big screen as a couple in "Play It To The Bone",
or when Fay Ann Lee and Gale Harold are playing lovers in Ms. Lee's recent film
"Falling For Grace". In contrast, in some movie theaters, particularly in
areas of New York City, objections could be heard from some rather vocal
audiences in several black neighborhoods, against Mr. Snipes's and Ms. Sciorra's
characters' togetherness and physical interactions in Mr. Lee's "Jungle Fever".
Similar hoots of disapproval met movie screens in the same city when Denzel
Washington's onscreen character was seen in bed with Milla Jovovich's character
in Mr. Lee's "He Got Game" in 1998.
Years ago "A Patch Of Blue", another Sidney Poitier vehicle, saw the matinee
idol and a blind white woman fall in love. Some film critics and audiences
saw the film as patronizing, condescending and insulting. Also in the
1960's, the Poitier film "To Sir, With Love", spotlighted a possible glimpse of
love for Mr. Poitier's teacher character, dubbed "Sir" by his students in a
London classroom, from Judy Geeson's student character. The 1970's saw a
parade of films where the black man (or woman) depicted was viewed as a sexual
stud or "vamp" who played into or exemplified the dominant white society's
perceptions and stereotypes of black physical and sexual prowess, either among
themselves or with white sexual partners. (See "Sweet Sweetback's
Baaadaaass Song", "Shaft", and films starring Jim Brown, who had also starred in
the 1969 film "100 Rifles", which featured some steamy scenes with Raquel Welch,
for which Mr. Brown and Ms. Welch received a lot of hate letters and criticism
from a contingent of American movie-goers and the mainstream press.)
Wesley Snipes will team
up with Spike Lee in the near future as the late Godfather of Soul James Brown,
in Mr. Lee's biopic on the legendary entertainer. (Photo courtesy: VH1)
So the question has to be asked: where the depictions of intimate onscreen
relations between whites and blacks on the big screen in America are concerned,
has much changed in the forty years or so since the Poitier era?
Years later, films like "Zebrahead", which featured a combustible romance
between Michael Rapaport and N'Bushe Wright in 1992; Robert De Niro's films "A
Bronx Tale" (1993) and last year's "The Good Shepherd"; the sexual relationship
Jon Voight's character has with an enslaved black female servant in "Rosewood"
(1997); the romance between Pam Grier and Robert Forster in Quentin Tarantino's
"Jackie Brown" (1997); Mr. Snipes and Nastassja Kinski and Ming-Na Wen in "One
Night Stand" (1997) and films like 2000's "M:i-2" (Tom Cruise and Thandie
Newton); "Monster's Ball", featuring a sexually-charged relationship between
Halle Berry -- who in 2002 would become the only black woman to win a lead
actress Oscar by virtue of her performance in Marc Forster's 2001 film -- and
Billy Bob Thornton; the 2003 film "The Truth About Charlie" (Mark Wahlberg and
Thandie Newton); the 2005 film "Guess Who", a comedic update of Mr. Kramer's
"Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" -- all of these may suggest that such topical
movies or interracial dynamics are still being greenlit, despite any objections
that may be made by film audiences in America or elsewhere about the racial
backgrounds of those in love. (Incidentally, "Guess Who" starred Bernie
Mac as the disapproving father, and Ashton Kutcher and Zoe Saldana as the
white-black lovers.)
Perhaps further evidence that there might be a modicum of "comfort" for some
American movie-going audiences with films exploring intimate romance between
blacks and whites can be seen with last year's "Something New" (starring Sanaa
Lathan and Simon Baker); "Shadowboxer" (featuring romances between Oscar-winning
duo Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr., and Mo'nique and Stephen Dorff), and this
year's smash summer hit film "Hairspray", which featured Amanda Bynes and Elijah
Kelley as a white-black singing couple in a loose parody of the famous 1968
Petula Clark-Harry Belafonte brief hand-touch incident on American network
television (that offended many white southerners and corporate sponsors of Ms.
Clark's television music special on NBC.) "Something New" and "Shadowboxer"
did not perform well over all, although "Something New" grossed $5 million in
its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada. The film focused on the
interracial relationship Ms. Lathan's attorney character has with a white
architect (Mr. Baker), and is viewed from a black woman's perspective, something
not seen very often in Hollywood movies. "They've been way more black
men-white women romances on the big screen," Ms. Lathan said in an interview
with National Public Radio in February 2006. The actor implied that this
fact was reflective of the perception that the black man-white woman
relationship was more accepted, citing a statistic that she did not wish to be
quoted on, in which she said that 13-14% of black men in the United States were
in such relationships, whereas only 3-4% of black women in the U.S. were in
relationships with white men.
This month, Halle Berry and David Duchovny play a married couple in Susanne
Bier's "Things We Lost In The Fire", but their race isn't something that draws
attention to itself in the context of both their relationship and Ms. Bier's
film. Benicio Del Toro also plays a substantial part as a potential love
interest for Ms. Berry in the film.
There are numerous other films -- one or two of those listed in the previous
paragraphs were not big hits at the North American box office -- but they
definitely had viewers and the some in the media talking. The likelihood
is that American studios will continue to make such films, as long as money
exists to be made. The political content of the films may change, or skew
in different way than either Mr. Kramer's or Mr. Lee's films do. In the
final analysis, Americans may never fully accept seeing love between those of
different racial backgrounds flourish either onscreen or off, but one thing is
certain: any sighting of such relationships onscreen or in real-life will always
give onlookers in America something to gawk at, "Jungle Fever", or no "Jungle
Fever".
