The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/spike-lee/)
Friday’s engaging conversation with the Academy-Award winning director took place in a sold-out Bailey Hall and featured Prof. Samantha Sheppard, performing and media arts. It was co-hosted by the Cornell University Program Board and the Multicultural Concert Funding Advisory Board.
BlacKkKlansman is oozing with 70s vibes, from the afros to the costumes to Terence Blanchard’s rich, R&B-based score. And yet director Spike Lee is hyper-aware of the history that preceded the film’s central story as well as the time period in which it is being told. The first character to appear on screen is a right-wing propagandist bumbling through his lines, played by none other than Alec Baldwin, who impersonated President Trump himself on Saturday Night Live. Like the film as a whole, the casting choice is more than a little bit on the nose, but it is also suitable for a 2018 political climate that doesn’t exactly call for subtlety. In that same vein, an opening title card tells us that “Dis joint is based on some fo’ real, fo’ real shit” — the story is so nuts that we probably wouldn’t believe it were true otherwise.