Spike Lee, Wanderer

Bruce Springsteen once sang about taking one step up and two steps back. With the release of Spike Lee’s 10th film, “Get on the Bus,” in the year that marks the 10th anniversary of his first feature, “She’s Gotta Have It,” he seems to be following Springsteen’s model.

With each of his films, it would appear that Lee is trying to take his career one step forward. After painfully watching his last three offerings, though, it would appear that he is going backward in a hurry. Yet understanding Lee’s situation is not as easy as it would have been some time ago. To get a grasp on the peaks and valleys of Lee’s body of work, we must start with his latest offering.

“Get on the Bus” is a road movie with a twist, a low-budget feature set on a bus trip from Los Angeles to Washington, taking a group of African American men to 1995’s Million Man March.

The range of male African Americans--old to young, straight to gay, liberal to conservative, father to son--refutes many narrow-minded perceptions of the black man, including those most recently perpetrated by “Waiting to Exhale.” This educated representation does more in the way of providing positive role models than most other things we’ve seen in contemporary popular culture.

One of the film’s most enjoyable moments comes when the bus is preparing to leave L.A. and the bus drivers suggest that a road trip would not be complete without “James,” as in the music of James Brown. Immediately, we hear the thumping sounds of “Papa Don’t Take No Mess,” and the passengers respond in kind by collectively “gettin’ their groove on.” The momentary release from the immediacy of their situation draws you into the long journey that you are about to experience.

Later on, the passengers engage in a “roll call,” where each one rhymes to the beat provided by the other passengers. This lighthearted moment brilliantly demonstrates the foundation of the black oral tradition and highlights the “call and response” element that distinguishes African American culture.

The film also brings forward several relevant topics that are often discussed in the black community, but are seldom seen or heard on film. Touchy topics like homosexuality, black political conservatism and African American prejudice against other races all get their proper air time. This shows once again that you cannot fit the massive square pegs of African American men into the round holes that mainstream culture so often tries to force them into.

But the film seems to stop short of being the comeback vehicle that one would expect from such an experienced filmmaker as Lee. “Get on the Bus” would have been a great first film; it would have even been a good second feature. But as the 10th film in 10 years of filmmaking, it’s not too much to ask that the standard of excellence be raised a little higher. The fact that “Get on the Bus” reminds you of “She’s Gotta Have It” with a bigger budget and better actors makes you ask, “What has he been doing all these years?”

When thinking about what has transpired since Lee’s emergence, we need look no further than to one of the most popular black images from a previous era, who has recently been undergoing a cycle of renewed interest on his own, Muhammad Ali.

Of all the memorable clips from Ali’s glorious past, one that stands out is of the moments following his surprise victory in the heavyweight championship fight against Sonny Liston in 1964. A struggling reporter is shown trying to conduct the interview while Ali is being hoisted on the shoulders of his entourage, declaring his dominance to all who would listen: “I shook up the world! I shook up the world!”

Ten years ago, Lee tried to do something similar in Hollywood. “She’s Gotta Have It” breathed fresh air into the possibility that there could be a viable black film movement. Shortly thereafter, Lee was hanging with Michael Jordan in Nike commercials and doing his own rendition of the quotable black man. Though most African American celebrities had for years refused to speak out about the injustices of the entertainment industry, Lee, like Ali before him, was an interviewer’s dream. Before long, Lee’s image had become larger than his films. Lee was becoming, in the words of the late comedian Robin Harris, “the man sitting next to the man.”

His second film, “School Daze,” was cursed by sophomore jinx, but his third, “Do the Right Thing,” in 1989, was a political manifesto that offered one of history’s harshest looks at America. In addition to pouring salt on some of the country’s deepest racial wounds, “Do the Right Thing” became a touchstone for a long-overdue political discussion on the state of black America. After its release, Lee was no longer considered the man sitting next to the man.

Hollywood began to realize that there was a market, largely untapped, for African American films. With Lee’s movies demonstrating that you could make relatively low-budget films that would generate high returns, Hollywood went on to make black film its momentary flavor. And when films like “Hollywood Shuffle,” “House Party,” “New Jack City” and “Boyz N the Hood” went on to extend this example, African American cinema had seemingly become a reality.

Soon Lee would join the likes of P.T. Barnum, Andy Warhol and Madonna, all self-promoters of the highest order. He opened stores selling merchandise related to his films, and his appearances at New York Knicks games would become a staple of NBA coverage on television.

Spike Lee had gone from being an independent filmmaker to existing in his own cult of personality. And in the process, it seemed that filmmaking, the act that got him there in the first place, had gone from being his obsession to being a mere hobby.

His highest act of self-promotion, and in hindsight what began to mark his downfall, came with the elaborate sideshow act he staged known as “Malcolm X” (1992). While a film on Malcolm was overdue, Lee’s rendition of Malcolm’s life, at times, seemed like something that might have been more appropriate as an attraction at a Las Vegas hotel. Siegfried & Roy were no match for this three-hour-and-20-minute excuse to see Spike dance the Lindy hop.

With this overt act of self-indulgence, Lee revealed that he had really failed to understand the fundamental lesson that his inspiration, Ali, had lived by: “If you can back it up, it ain’t bragging.” At the end of the day, Lee could not live up to the lofty heights he had created for himself.

Lee then went on a downward spiral that almost erased all he had previously gained. While “Malcolm X” represented the flash and glitz of a show on the Las Vegas Strip, “Crooklyn,” “Clockers” and “Girl 6” were better suited for Laughlin. Lee was even reduced to making videos for another dying symbol of pop’s past, Michael Jackson, even though Lee in his younger days had repeatedly dissed Jackson for the singer’s apparently questionable embrace of his blackness.

This current Lee-Jackson reclamation project is reminiscent of a scene in a little-known, though provocative 1966 film, “A Man Called Adam,” starring Sammy Davis Jr. Davis plays a temperamental trumpet player who on one occasion cracks an empty liquor bottle and holds the jagged edges up to the neck of his despicable manager. He goes on to make the manager crawl around on the floor like a dog, an act of utter humiliation. This is one of the most powerful scenes in the film. But later, when Davis can no longer get a job, he is reduced to crawling back, literally and figuratively, to his manager in a crowded restaurant, with tears flowing from his eyes.

As the credits roll in “Get on the Bus,” we see a special gesture of gratitude extended to “the King of Pop, Michael Jackson,” who also performs the opening song. The fact that Lee would embrace Jackson not only looks like a contradiction of his previous “blacker-than-thou” public persona, but it also seems quite ironic that a figure like Jackson, who seems so ambivalent, even resentful, about his race, would be featured so prominently in a film that foregrounds questions of race in such a strident way.

Lee’s act of desperation--crawling back to embrace a figure he once so vehemently criticized--underscores the film’s desperate attempt to make us pay attention when other things seem so much more interesting. Life, can at times, be very cruel.

Where does all of this leave Spike Lee and his future as a significant figure in Hollywood? No one with any knowledge of film history would place Lee’s name in any lofty category. But we cannot deny his impact on popular culture either. It is also overwhelmingly positive. Lee broke down barriers in Hollywood that had been there for far too long. He worked to integrate African Americans into the Hollywood mainstream, both in front of and behind the camera.

Like Quentin Tarantino’s films, Lee’s are more about articulating audacious attitude than they are about filmmaking in any traditional sense. But At what point is it necessary to merge this unrelenting attitude with some serious skills that go beyond the individual filmmaker’s world?

Yet attitude, style and visibility count for more than skill and substance these days, and with that in mind, Lee has weathered the storm, regardless of what you may think of his work.

When all is said and done, Lee’s two steps back as a filmmaker are less significant than his one step up as a larger-than-life symbol of our redefined popular age. Yes, he shook up the world. It just happens to be a different world than we might have originally expected.