Chi-Raq Spike Lee Essay
The movie Chi-raq by Spike Lee is one of the most interesting movies I have seen in a while. It’s funny, it’s engaging, but most importantly, it has a message. The movie centers around the city of Chicago, Illinois, or as it is nicknamed “Chi-raq.” The movie opens up with a song about Chi-raq which shows a narrative of someone’s life in Chi-raq, it then opens up to a quote stating how the number of people killed in chi-raq have surpassed the death toll of Americans in both the Afghanistan and Iraqi combined. The film then sets the narrative of the girlfriend of one of the gang leaders leading a “sex strike” in order to force the men to create some kind of treaty to stop the killings. There are two main aspects of this film that I believe can be interpreted incorrectly and unsurprisingly these are the aspects that received harsh criticisms and left people wondering what is Spike Lee trying to do. Initial controversy comes from the title itself, a lot of native Chicagoans renounce the nickname “Chi-raq” claiming that it is unjustly called so as it is not a war zone. I see this side of the argument however; I believe that Spike Lee was trying to make a point by naming the movie Chi-raq. First of all, he knew that this title would gain attention on all sides, second I think that with the way the film is set up he …show more content…
I myself was kind of taken aback by this at first as well. It seems to say that the only power we have as women is our bodies and sex. But after thinking critically about the movie and reading what Spike Lee himself had to say about the movie I realize that it is only, metaphor for the true power that women hold. Not only this but it calls attention to the oversexualized images of women and make the viewer aghast at the idea that a sex strike might actually work in today’s society. Not only this but he calls attention to this perverse idea of masculinity that exits in today’s
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