Spike Lee Objective Truth Analysis

Wahneema Lubiano contests Spike Lee’s extensive acclaim by assessing his hegemonic effect on depictions of African American culture; she cites the importance of a comparative base and how the lack of qualifying alternatives to Lee’s “reality” render a declaration of reality “reductionist” (100). When reality is continuously based on one representation and established by a “consensus of a particular group,” it withstands simply due to the “absence of existing alternatives” (104). Because Lee’s “financial success [and] general deification…marginalize other African American filmic possibilities,” his “truth” is taken as an objective truth (100). His reality is seen as the correct reality. However, can an objective truth even exist amidst narrative representation? Lubiano finds problems with filmic realism due to its focus on documentary evidence and the unattainability of an objective “truth” (representation is …show more content…
Because he is “empowered by Hollywood studio hegemony” (qtd. on 99), Lee portrays “African American presence within the terms of Euro-American dominance” (101). Though financial support cannot solely account for contextual difference, there is no doubt that a “compromise in form and content is inevitable.” How can one achieve a perfect depiction of reality when they are submitting to a guideline that will be profitable? Money has the power to transmit Lee’s depiction of reality as the depiction of reality; when other perspectives are muted or, at best, shown in select artsy cinemas, the ability to search for the “real thing” by comparing to other renderings of the “real thing” is inexistent. This leads to the concept of exposing reality in general. Is it fair to say that one communicates reality simply by communicating facts or documentary evidence? Does one not choose the facts he