Monroe Anderson: Spike Lee’s #Chiraq could be KKK

Spike Lee via RAGE ig

So the new Spike Lee "joint" expected to be filmed in Englewood that's causing some controversy among some in Chicago - for it's title primarily - is the subject of a column from Monroe Anderson.

You can see why Chiraq is not the best title for what’s really happening here. So, I’ve got a better suggestion. I think Spike should look at the artwork of visual artist James Pate and either beg, borrow or buy his cutting edge artistic vision. A couple of years ago, Pate had a three-month exhibition at the DuSable Museum. Its title was KKK--Kin Killin Kin.

The detailed black and white drawings, beautiful yet powerful, were of boys from the hood, wearing Ku Klux Klan-like headgear with their black faces exposed or basketball jerseys with the initials KKK on them while pointing guns at each other’s heads. The bullets they fired were artistically frozen just before they entered each other’s heads.

That unnerving reality would make a much more powerful movie than a sequel to the Hughes brothers 1993 hit.

I was thinking this could be another one of those message movies which seemed very popular in the 1990s.  This time at least a movie will be set on the south side of Chicago instead of South Central Los Angeles.

Also if you read the another issue is at play, gentrification. Violence is an important issue of course but not the only one. Neighborhoods like Bronzeville is changing and in the future the eye is on Englewood - where this movie will be set.