Jungle Fever

I saw Jungle Fever for the first time years ago, when it first came out on video. By the movie's end, I was lost. Part of it may have been maturity - I was in junior high - and part of it was that the movie I was sold was not the movie I got. Part of this selling is Stevie Wonder's title song, which frequently finds its way into my tapedeck. And the kind of color-blind love Wonder sings about is not the relationship in this movie. Something I feel now as I felt then was that the film does not let us get close to these people, let us see them in love. Only now do I realize that this is because the film is not about two people in love. When I first saw it, I thought the film was advocating segregation from the "other side." Now I realize that it just showing the complexity of issues which come to play when a black person and white person from separatist neighborhoods come together, and mostly how those environments are changed. There are things to overcome, but this relationship will not overcome them. I am still puzzled by the rather large subplot involving Samuel L. Jackson as Wesley Snipes's crackhead brother and by the final shot where Wesley Snipes clutches a crack-whore to himself and screams "NO!" while the camera rushes from halfway across Harlem to end in a close-up on him. It's indelible - most of what has stuck with me about this movie over time involves this subplot and that shot - but I am still puzzled by its intention in the overall scheme of what the film is trying to say. Something about the endless problems facing black people?

With some interesting ideas about racism, some creative camera-work, and generally solid acting, there is enough in this film to make it worth checking out, albeit not enough to make it a great film. Spike Lee's depiction of a modern society build about racism lacks credibility, as it is hard to believe that the only thing the characters care about is racism-related. Lee's colour scheme hurts the film too, as the hues, in particular the oranges, are very harsh on the eyes, this distracting one from the on screen action. There are also some drug addiction subplots fitted in, to no certain advantage, and despite Terence Blanchard providing a nice multi-style score, it is used rather awkwardly throughout. Plus, there one large unanswered question: is Lee endorsing segregation and racism in the film? Believe it or not, in spite of these problems, the film has enough in it for adequate viewing. Seeing Halle Berry in her first big screen appearance is quite interesting, and Queen Latifah makes her debut appearance too as a waitress. It is very well shot, competently acted and it provides some things to think about, even if it is not too great overall stuff.

This movie is more about sex than race. Lee was quoted in the NYT as follows: "I hate this whole Hollywood process of breaking down a movie to one sentence," he said. "My films don't deal with one theme. They interweave many different things. You have to think. I'm not saying interracial relationships are impossible. Flipper and Angie are not meant to represent every interracial couple in the world. They are meant to represent two people who got together because of sexual mythology instead of love. Then they stay together because they're pushed together. They're outcasts. And since their relationship isn't based on love, when things get tough, they can't weather the storm." Thus at its core this film is a feminist critique of the nature of sexual attraction in contemporary America. These folks are wrong for each other but they both are stereotypically "attractive." There is "chemistry" between them, but no shared values that are the bedrock of a serious relationship. The "black stud"/ "sexy white girl" is just one way this could be instantiated.

In one sense, this is a serious issue and it is worth exploring. My own misgivings about this film is that Lee's moral seems to be: values = good, chemistry = bad, and this strikes me as somewhat simplistic.

In his opening sequence to Jungle Fever, Spike Lee introduces the pervasive theme of the appropriateness of sex. Through the red haze of a Harlem morning, we are introduced to Flipper and his wife Drew in a very compromising position. Entangled in both the sheets and a moment of passion, the couple begin their morning in copulation, all the while trying desperately not to `wake the baby.' This `baby' could be a child who they've already produced or a child who is potentially in the making.

This notion of sex as a means of producing children runs throughout the film. We find that even after Flipper has begun his relationship with Angela Tucci, he would never think of having children with her. Flipper's fear of having mixed (`octoon, quadroon, mulatto') children is very high. We learn that his wife is mixed herself. Her father is white and her mother is black. During the scene in her office, we get a glimpse of the kind of heartache that she has suffered from her skin color, a result of the intermingling of the two races of her parents. This sex-and-its-aftermath theme manifests itself in the dysfunctional parent/child(ren) relationships throughout the film. Angie is tied to her father and two brothers as a sort of domestic slave. Not only does she have to work hard in a distant part of town all day, but she also has to return home to cook for and clean up after her three male family members. She seems to receive no financial or emotional support for her efforts either. This becomes very clear when her father beats her up after learning of her relationship with Flipper. We see a similar relationship develop with Paulie and his father. His father's constant nagging about the number of each of the periodicals that he orders on a daily basis coupled with his lack of gratefulness for the meals that he cooks for him each day drive Paulie mad. Though Paulie's father isn't as physically abusive as Angela's father is, we see his proclivity toward violence we he forces his way into the bathroom and whaps a teary-eyed Paulie on the head with a magazine. Eventually, Paulie is able to stand up to his father, telling him `I'm not your f***ing wife; I'm your son.'

The most powerful and destructive parent/child(ren) relationship that unfolds on the screen is that of Flipper's family, including his brother Gator and both of his parents. Lee's choice to introduce the reverend doctor and his wife as parents of Gator first necessarily colors our impression of them as good parents. What type of parents produce a crackhead? Certainly not the same type of parents that produce an upstanding architect, but maybe the type of parents who would rear an interracial adulterer. Other than Drew, who we really never see interact with her child, Gator's mother is the only mother to which we're physically exposed in the text. She loves both of her children and would rather not talk about the problems that exist in their relationships. Instead, she closes her eyes to the truth of Gator's drug habit and hands him money while he does the dances that she likes, and she would rather change the subject at the dinner table than broach the topic of adultery. This approach to parenting doesn't work any better than that of her counterpart. The reverend doctor doesn't ever want to really talk to his kids about their problems without using biblical metaphors. These one-sided diatribes seem to drown out any potential discussions just as much as the wailing of his favorite Mahalia Jackson records. In the end, he must kill his neglected son because he has deteriorated so extensively from crack use. The film's concluding sequence has brought us full circle. The framing of the newspaper landing on Flipper's stoop initially suggests that everything has returned to normal - that Drew has accepted her husband back into her life. Their daughter's smiles and giggles also point to the same conclusion. But we find, as Drew rolls over in bed and tells Flipper he better leave, that the sex is only a temporary fix for a desire for pleasure. The sex will not solve the problems that it has created. In the film's resolution, we see echoes of Paulie's father's former explosion in the bathroom: `All they think marriage is for is humping.'

The final, seemingly confusing line of the film - `Yo, daddy, I'll suck your big black d*** for $2.' - sums up this theme well. It both mirrors in video and echoes in audio an almost identical part from earlier in the film. When Flipper was walking his daughter to school, a crack whore approaches him with the offer, `I'll suck your d*** for $5.' By the film's end, the price has lowered, the sex has been cheapened, and the whore is addressing Flipper as `daddy.' In this final line, the importance of parent/child relationships is emphatic. Sex, a supposedly physical manifestation of love, often results in a product - a child. This child will then live in a society where sex and love is misguided or undirected altogether.

Spike Lee's films are consistent in one respect, even for the lesser ones, which is that they're always pressing buttons. In the case of Jungle Fever, it's another work where messages come out more than from a guy on a postal route. But that's perhaps part of the point, where such points come in many forms and sometimes like a barrage. This time, it doesn't completely gel as well as Lee's Do the Right Thing, which also held anger, contemplation, humor, and pathos about city life. But this time it's also a tale of sexual morays, where both white and black sides have their share of racism and prejudices, and at the core is a story of outcasts. The interesting thing then about Jungle Fever is how Lee's own decisions in casting and in the unique way he shoots his subjects and implements a subjective take more often then not trump what comes out in his script. Then again, maybe it's close to being inevitable with how the elements mix, and at the end there are some parts of the film that are the best that Lee's done so far as a filmmaker.

Wesley Snipes and Anabella Sciora star as the said 'jungle fever' couple, the man being married with a kid, of all things to a woman who is also light-skinned and with her own 'issues', and the woman having an 'old-fashioned' Italian father. When their affair becomes known to both sides, the costs come out and they both become outcasts. And at the end of all of the points that are made in Jungle Fever by Lee, even through the ones that are pounded and (of the period) quite topical and prominent, this notion of society and culture being the biggest culprit is hard to ignore. This main point is made very well by Lee's script, and even as sometimes the script doesn't have the best dialog or lines a little 'too easy', if that makes any sense, there are many scenes which do support this to the fullest. And as the job of any good director is to cast right, this film is filled with a who's-who's of professionals and character actors.

One could go on as to who appears in the film, from Anthony Quinn to Tim Robbins to Ossie Davis to John Turturro, and they all fit their parts and contribute to adding a level of fascination in each. When the less desirable aspects peak in even more, it only adds to what ends up working on screen. Sometimes the script, as mentioned, is a little derivative and trying to touch ALL bases, with a but the film is more often than not alive due to (some of) the music at times. Maybe the most genius pieces of casting were Samuel L. Jackson, in (arguably) one of his very best performances, and Halle Berry. In a sense there are similar points made in the "A" storyline and the "B" one, where there is some extra interest in the supporting characters and their connection with the main ones. Jackson and Berry are crack-heads, and outcasts, and to their own degree have the same crap end of the stick as the leads to. Among many scenes where confrontations reach a great emotional intensity, the best comes with Snipes going into the crack-house and seeing just the purest dark side of society, what really does bring people down.

In the end, Jungle Fever is one of the Lee movies that is worth seeing, that may prove on a repeat viewing to bring even more thought than previous. It's energetic, somber, occasionally funny and shocking in equal measure.