Chi-Raq

“When I wrote this script, I had a black audi­ence in mind. But that’s not to say that nobody else can enjoy it. It has been my con­tention all along that a black film direct­ed by a black per­son can still be uni­ver­sal.” This was Spike Lee speak­ing to The New York Times in 1996 about his debut fea­ture She’s Got­ta Have It. Twen­ty years lat­er those words ring espe­cial­ly true of his bril­liant, urgent new film Chi-Raq, which reaf­firms Lee as not only the most artic­u­late pro­po­nent of black agency and iden­ti­ty in Amer­i­ca today but also one of the most astute social com­men­ta­tors of his generation.

Set in Chica­go – so-called ​‘Chi-Raq’ because of its rep­u­ta­tion as one of America’s most dan­ger­ous cities; the 2016 death toll has already eclipsed last year’s (the vic­tims are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly young black men with shoot­ing the most com­mon cause of death) – the film trans­pos­es Aristo­phanes’ com­e­dy play ​‘Lysis­tra­ta’, about absti­nence in Ancient Greece, to present-day Engle­wood, a noto­ri­ous neigh­bour­hood sit­u­at­ed on the city’s South­side. It’s here fol­low­ing the acci­den­tal death of a child – a rou­tine occur­rence which goes unchecked in a com­mu­ni­ty where it’s safer to say noth­ing than speak out – that Lysis­tra­ta (Tey­on­ah Par­ris) decides enough is enough. She moves to unite the girl­friends of rival gang mem­bers by propos­ing a sex strike, much to the deri­sion of her gangster/​rapper beau Demetrius aka ​“Chi-Raq” (Nick Can­non). But their ral­ly­ing cry ​‘No Peace, No Pussy’ catch­es on, and before long women’s groups every­where
are com­mand­ing the atten­tion of the world’s media by stag­ing peace­ful, impas­sioned protests of their own.

Not since 2000’s Bam­boo­zled has Lee zeroed in on the root cause of a deep-seat­ed social prob­lem with such raw focus. Cru­cial­ly his lat­est satir­i­cal polemic, which could best be described as a hip hop musi­cal with a social­ly-con­scious beat, doesn’t force the issue either. And while gun cul­ture and gang vio­lence are often tak­en as unique­ly Amer­i­can con­cerns, the film’s scope is ulti­mate­ly much broad­er than its title sug­gests. In an ear­ly scene Lysis­tra­ta is shown read­ing up on real-life peace activist Leymah Gbowee, who led a women’s move­ment which helped bring an end to the Sec­ond Liber­ian Civ­il War in 2003. Chica­go (and by exten­sion Amer­i­ca) may not exact­ly be at war with itself, but it’s telling that Lee choos­es to draw par­al­lels between his country’s cur­rent polarised sociopo­lit­i­cal cli­mate and that still unsta­ble but for­ward look­ing region.

The dan­ger is that, irre­spec­tive of the film’s incen­di­ary mes­sage, Chi-Raq pro­vides such high enter­tain­ment val­ue as to some­how triv­i­alise the actu­al loss of life seen in Chica­go and many oth­er cities like it. Yet the point here is to stress the pow­er of mass protest, to under­line the fact that pos­i­tive action can and does lead to progress. ​‘Hope’ and ​‘Change’ may seem like bro­ken promis­es to some, but regard­less of who is in the Oval Office by the time this film is released, peo­ple won’t stop believ­ing in a bet­ter tomorrow.