Continuing Brandon Wilson’s countdown of Spike Lee’s 10 Worst Female Characters, via his Twitter page…

I posted #8 (Sloane Hopkins, played by Jada Pinkett Smith in Bamboozled), #9 (Clarke Betancourt, played by Cynda Williams in 1990’s Mo’Better Blues), and #10 (Betty Shabazz, portrayed by Angela Bassett in Spike’s 1992 magnum opus Malcolm X) earlier in the week.

Today, we’ve got #7, #6 and #5.

Read them below… and, as before, feel free to agree/disagree with Brandon in the comment section below.

#7

At number 7, we have 2 characters who I believe are inextricably linked. From ‘Malcolm X,’ the combine of Laura (Theresa Randle) & Sophia (Kate Vernon). This gets us into dicey territory. Immediately some will say these characters are from the autobiography; therefore we can’t blame Spike. One of the tenets of the Auteur Theory is that even if the director is adapting the material s/he is still in effect taking ownership of it. In other words, Spike may not have created Laura, Sophia, or Betty Shabazz, but his handling of them is still revealing. Laura is the ‘good girl’ who young Malcolm rebuffs in favor of the ‘bad girl’ Sophia thanks to the siren call of interracial sexy time. In the book, X said he always blamed himself for good girl Laura’s subsequent descent into wickedness. So here, we have yet another madonna-whore dynamic, except here, the madonna becomes a whore, quite literally. And as Sophia is last seen as a reformed bourgeois hausfrau, the whore becomes a madonna, sort of. And also, there’s an ancillary nature to the characters. They are there for no other reason but to serve the story. A big problem in movies. Spike’s character Shorty feels far more rounded and less schematic than either Laura or Sophia. Then there’s the matter of interracial relationships. In his early work, Spike takes a dim view of them, and that colors (sorry) things. In his early work, interracial relationships were ALWAYS a sign of moral turpitude. So it is impossible for Malcolm & Sophia to really have a layered relationship, or for Sophia to be a complex character.

In Jungle Fever, Snipes and Sciorra more or less staged a revolt. They acted against Spike vision of Flipper & Angie’s affair. Angie Tucci, Sciorra’s character in JF, may be one of Spike BEST women characters, ironically. But Sciorra had to fight for her character. Angie isn’t perfect. But she has nuance. And she was (almost) Flipper’s equal in the story, not just there to further the narrative. The shot of Angie returning home, defeated, heartbroken, is one of the saddest images in Spike’s filmography. It’s hard to not to feel like she’s being punished not just by society/family, but by the filmmaker, in the end. FYI, Spike’s formative incident was the one-two punch of having his mother die & having his dad move a white woman in too soon afterwards. This brought us the many martyred moms in his cinema (twice played by Lonette McKee), his daddy issues, and his antipathy to the swirl. So Laura & Sophia really get at his big issues: madonna-whore, women as bystanders, and white women as symbols of corruption.

Having outlined some of Spike’s hang-ups with women, let me end for now w/ two others: The Jezebel & The Sapphire. Both are negative female archetypes that we see more than once in Spike’s work. For those that didn’t major in Black Studies, Sapphire connotes a perpetually angry, castrating, mean black woman. If I’m not mistaken, Sapphire was originally a character in Amos N’ Andy. Academics then extended her name to the archetype. I’m sure the poet/author of Push (Precious) adopted that as her sobriquet b/c of the name’s connotation. I’ll mention a Sapphire and a Jezebel as we continue our countdown.

#6

Number 6 in the Spike’s worst list: Tina, from Do The Right Thing, as played by Rosie Perez. Tina is a Sapphire, really. She isn’t horrible. Just underdeveloped. She has every right to be difficult, but I don’t think the director empathizes with her. So she becomes shrill. The actress may have something to do with that. Enough said on Tina.

#5

Fatima Goodrich, Kerry Washington in She Hate Me, one of Spike’s worst films. Fatima, is a deceiver (the protag catches her in bed w/ another woman), mercenary, and wholly unsympathetic. She’s a Jezebel. Worse yet, Fatima strikes one as a bit too much the product of Spike’s over-heated erotic imagination. Male writers often hatch female characters from their carnal desires, but a major character needs a little more to her than that. James Elroy clearly fashions his women from his raging id, but they get to be their own person too. Fatima speaks to the flaws of the film; it’s a chaotic, unfocused mess which will always be Exhibit A when Spike is tried for self-indulgence.

Alright… there ya have it for #7, #6 and #5! Four more to go which I’ll certainly post here

Of course, if you’re already on Twitter, feel free to follow Brandon at twitter.com/Geniusbastard, or find him on Facebook at facebook.com/brandon.d.wilson.