Sighhhhhh. What to make of Spike Lee's film, She Hate Me ? I confess I rolled my eyes before I even left for the theatre because when a straight man purports to teach me (or anyone else) something about the lives and attitudes of lesbians, I have to wonder what he knows, or thinks he knows. Lee approached Tristan Taormino, a lesbian author and sex columnist for the Village Voice, to be a "technical consultant." Ms. Taormino tutored him in an accelerated "Lesbian Boot Camp" where Lee was required to read books, visit bars and participate in panel discussions. By the time you finish watching the film, though, you may wonder if Ms. Taormino was used as an unwitting shill.
There are many things I admire about Lee. You only have to hear the lush musical cues that hark back to pre-60s to understand that the man is all heart, and though you could take exception to many of the ideas bouncing and careening off the screen in such bombastic films as: She's Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Bamboozled and School Daze, the effect is intriguing, disturbing, intense and cogent. Mr. Lee usually leads with his emotions. His visual style is immediate and erratic, yet self-assured. He's not afraid to luxuriate in the filmmaking process, but neither is he averse to tying us to a runaway train.
Sadly very little of his usual vigor and iconoclastic punch are to be found in She Hate Me. His usual, drumming, colloquial patter feels a bit forced and gratuitous. His caricatures of white people, Italians, and yes, lesbians lack the core truths that justify his previous films. I welcome the work of any artist that enables me to see Caucasians through the eyes of an African American, and ordinarily, Lee does this very well, but the numerous villains in She Hate Me are just too much like puppets. Or targets.
As much as anything, She Hate Me is about corruption, and the power of money to corrupt. It raises a cluster of other issues: racism, ethics, moral responsibility, scapegoating, eugenics, hypocrisy, but seems to pivot on how the desire for profit corrupts white-dominated, corporate America and the desperation for money corrupts our hero, John Armstrong.
John is sacked after reporting the unethical tactics of the firm where he works, and forced to find other methods of gainful employment when his assets are frozen. His ex-fiancée', Fatima, comes to call, and offers him $5000 a pop (hehehe) if he will agree to impregnate her and her female partner, Alex. She quickly realizes that John's ability to inseminate makes him a "cash bull" and offers to broker his services to lesbian couples who wish to start a family and crave his genetic pedigree.
In retrospect, John says he's ashamed he's earned money this way, but never explains exactly why. It's suggested he resorted to prostitution, but surely the fact that he provided a valuable service, without the emotional perils of artificial insemination and adoption, overshadows this. Lee treats this endeavor as satire, with lukewarm results. Some of it is relatively amusing and not all of it is offensive, but it's surprising to see how much of it just runs down like a broken clock. It's funny to see John wash down a Viagra with a can of Red Bull, or his animated sperm racing to penetrate an eager ovum, but it feels so slight. So pitiful.
Lee gets a lot of mileage out of the diesel dykes and how the women revel in their opportunity to diminish and degrade John. But while there may be some accuracy in his depiction of the lesbian community, a lot of his material is unconscionable. He takes stabs and swipes at the reasons why women sexually attach to other women, and sincere as he may be, a lot of She Hate Me is blighted by pure ignorance. The women in Lee's film are decidedly non-nurturing and the lesbian women kind of strange. Even if we account for natural human curiosity, they seem awfully impressed by John's penis, and more than a little receptive to him in bed.
John confronts Fatima about her sexual ambivalence in a key sequence. We backtrack to a devastating scene where John discovers Fatima in bed with another woman not long before their wedding day. I do not want to downplay John's legitimate sense of betrayal, but frankly I resent Lee's disingenuous implication that Fatima (while not completely honest) was playing fast and loose with her fiancée's feelings. Can he really be this stupid?
People of both sexes often conduct same-gender affairs for years, only to walk away in favor of heterosexual romance. And because so many of us are raised to assume we're straight, sometimes sexual orientation doesn't become clear until after we're married. It happens all the time. Almost 20 years after breakthrough films like Lianna and Desert Hearts , Spike Lee is still clinging to the sweet, ridiculous myth that the right man (i.e. caring, tender, sensitive) can "cure" lesbianism. Maybe the right guy could cure his heterosexuality.