I had high hopes for this film, but was really disappointed. It lazily and unconsciously eroticizes hyper masculinity and rape culture ideas about sexuality. It's also shamefully heteronormative. Lesbian, gay and transgender people of color simply do not exist. I lost count of how many "Be a Man" moments there were in the film (hey Mr. Lee, that's kinda the problem right there). Spike Lee sells out black women to save black "manhood" by reinforcing that women's worth and power is in their sexuality. The problem isn't that the film is sexy, because it's not. The problem is that the film is rapey. WHAT a missed opportunity to really make some statements about breaking down the gender norms that enable male gang violence. Instead, this film just reinforced a strict gender binary in which females are dressed as porn stars and move like strippers and are the objects of lust. For all the talk of "booty" I didn't see one naked male "booty" in the whole film--though there was plenty of naked female "booty." The language of "sexuality" in the film repeatedly frames sex as something the big strong male does TO the sexy female who gives it up to him. Spike Lee has taken his archaic definition of "sex" from the porn industry, which is ironic, since the film is about becoming conscious of your own "slave conditioning." Apparently the women in this film did not get that memo regarding sexuality. The people raving about this film are totally oblivious about this underlying irony. For women and men of all colors, this movie gets three stars for being one step forward, but two steps back in analyzing and addressing the true cause of male gang violence--toxic hyper masculinity and the sexual scripts that enable it, which this film enthusiastically reinforces.
Review of Chi-Raq
