How Does Spike Lee Influence Cinema

“What's the difference between Hollywood characters and my characters? Mine are real” (Spike Lee). Spike Lee, born as Shelton Jackson Lee, is an African American director. He was born on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia, but as a young boy moved to Brooklyn, New York. As a kid, Lee was an energetic and naughty kid which earned himself the nickname “Spike” in reference to his toughness according to his mother, Jacqueline Carroll. He attended Atlanta’s Morehouse College, where he earned a BA in Mass Communication and made his first student film Last Hustle in Brooklyn (1976). Later, he took on a couple of film courses at Atlanta’s Clark University. He ended his studies with a Masters in Fine Arts in Film and Television from Tisch School of the Arts in New York. Lee’s initial recognition was in

According to the biography on Spike Lee, Fight The Power: Spike Lee’s Impact On Black Cinema, “it becomes clear that he uses his own experiences of living in an integrated neighbourhood in New York to help express the hidden, if not conflicting, messages on the ideals of racism ‘between African Americans and their non-black New York City neighbours’” (The Film General Website), which makes his films more accurate. His experiences have helped him give an honest representation of the black community. An example is his 1988 film School Daze. School Daze is a musical drama that deals challenge issues of racism, for example, skin tone bias within the black community. The film was influenced and depicts his own experiences at Morehouse College and Clark University. Moreover, themes and topics in School Daze, and in other of his early works like Do the Right Thing (1989), and Malcolm X (1992) helped him gain respect as a director in