Brown-eyed, Handsome Man
I caught Spike Lee’s latest effort Inside Man last night, and I have to say: Spike Lee has some serious gender issues.
While he let Jodi Foster run around kicking ass (which is really all that anyone can do with her since Silence of the Lambs), two young female characters were identified by the size of their breasts at several points in the film, and we got to see the female bad guy’s cleavage every time she was on screen — somehow, miraculously, even when she was wearing a painter’s suit. Also, Detective Keith Frazier’s (Denzel Washington) live-in spends the entire movie trying to get her man to come home and strip down, or at least marry her. The characterization was so sparse that, “This is my girlfriend. She’s a sex object bent on getting a ring,” would have seemed a fitting introduction.
The point being, working against negative racial stereotypes while reinforcing the exploitation of women is far from progressive; it’s just the second verse in the same song. PETA is guilty of invoking the same rhetoric, which seems to argue, “Don’t abuse animals…exploit women.” Maybe they can get Spike Lee to direct their next ad campaign.