Amazon Studios releases first trailer for Spike Lee film 'Chi-Raq'

Amazon Studios released the first trailer for Spike Lee’s film Chi-Raq Tuesday — and man, what did I just watch?

The trailer, as with most Spike Lee joints, is star-studded, humorous, edgy and, well — controversial.

Users on social media responded swiftly to the clip, and the reactions have been mixed, to say the least.

Some people, such as myself, believe that the movie shouldn’t be judged on the trailer alone and that we should actually watch the film before arriving at a conclusion about how “damaging” it is to black people.

https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/661673020117880832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

But what I perceived to be the dominant narrative, especially from folks in Chicago, is that Spike Lee’s film is a tone-deaf, inauthentic, exploitative mockery of black pain, suffering and loss.

https://twitter.com/IamAkademiks/status/661644589275725825?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/IAMWILLIEWILL/status/661687383495053312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Understandable. Gun violence in Chicago is horrific, heart-hurting, jaw-dropping and tugs at the core of so many black and brown families everyday.

Many thoughts ran through my head while watching the trailer. One, I was like, “Wow, Teyonah Parris might be the most beautiful woman alive.” Another was like, “Yo, that’s Dave Chappelle!”

After watching, I learned that the film is a modern day adaptation of Aristophanes’ Greek comedy Lysistrata in which wives from two warring countries come together to decide to stop the war by giving their husbands an ultimatum between continuing their war without sex from their spouses or choosing peace and continuing to get it in with their women.

When I learned that, I immediately thought, “Spike crazy for this one!”

But as the director behind brilliant films such as School Daze, Jungle Fever, Do The Right Thing, and Malcolm X, he has more than earned enough creative leeway for me to give this film a fighting chance.

The one thing I never considered was that this trailer is somehow the worst thing to happen to the credibility and humanity of Chicago’s black population — especially when drill music is actually a thing.

I find this hard as hell to say, especially as a man who actively campaigned against the rigid censorship of C. Delores Tucker — the woman who tried to bring down hip hop in the 90s — but there’s no way in hell you can convince me that the abject propagation of murder, gang violence and trapping by Chief Keef and the crew is somehow less damaging to the minds of folks than this latest Spike Lee joint.

As much as I love hip hop, I cannot and will not pretend that there isn’t a stark and nauseating amount of encouragement for misogyny and violence.

When I was young, the reason I could stand up to a C. Delores Tucker was predicated on the notion, however faulty it may have been, that rappers were able to admit, even if by excessive prodding, that what they rapped about was more a figment of entertainment rather than a real, lived brutality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBhf-gEvQug

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve raged against black respectability politics, the flawed idea that inner city crime is wholly driven by rap records, and the notion that kids need to pull up their pants in order to be treated with any semblance of humanity — ideas which I still fight for today.

I’ve actually gone head-to-head with Lupe Fiasco over these ideas, but when he says he’s “scared” of the new generation of “rappers” being produced out of Chicago, I actually understand where he’s coming from there.

While Chi-town rappers have been raw since the days of Do or Die, this new generation of emcees are doing shit like reacting to fellow teen Chicago rappers being murdered by going on Twitter and laughing at death like Chief Keef did after 16-year old rapper Jojo was killed in 2012.

Drill music has now “blessed” us with so much ignorance that these emcees are becoming parodies of themselves.

I wonder why there aren’t more voices condemning folks for calling the city they live in “Chiraq” and promoting the youths as being nothing more than trigger happy?

Look, I’m not one of these “blame rap for all of society’s ills” type of guys.

In fact, I believe if more people researched the sociological effects that decades of redlining, the racist tendencies of the criminal justice system, economic divestment and horrific drug policy has had on inner city communities, folks wouldn’t dare to bring up rap music, TV shows and movies as being dominant problems in impoverished black neighborhoods.

But, if we are going to have a conversation about the absurdity of gang violence in entertainment in Chicago, there’s no way in hell we should be talking about Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq before talking about the absurdity of this drill music culture that has been prevalent there for far too long.