Mo' Better Blues : The Blues of Blaxploitation

"Mo' Better  Blues" ,  underrated  but acclaimed director  Spike Lee's  fourth  film, is both a confident personal ode to the art of jazz and  it's roots  in the African  American  experience, and a personal portrait of the artist and his struggle with mainstream  acceptance. But wait , I said underrated, and I want to expound upon and qualify that statement, even though I really shouldn’t have to. Starting with the fact that I believe that every black director that ever existed is in some way underrated, and definitely those who have arrived to the point that their films received any widespread recognition and/or acclaim. Blackness is in and of itself in America “otherness”, and so too are black achievements. There is no space where black achievement or experience doesn’t live in and unto its own in America, and Hollywood is no outlier here. In fact they’ve been a willing accomplice, through propaganda, and discrimination. This inherent loneliness of blackness in America, is not without its merits, separation can be a great muse for creation, and the need to create, the necessity - the mother of invention, and we all know black people have created, and invented quite a lot here in the wilderness. But any isolation one cannot choose to depart or return from is confinement, it is a prison. Like all prisons, this prison restricts movement, and constricts the soul and in the case of the artist a great deal of things but none with a more insidious effect on the soul than the limitation and restriction of audience, bias, and imposed inferiority. The artist longs for an audience, and beyond the audience, recognition, art for art’s sake is romantic , but mostly a reaction to commercialization and exploitation. It is important here because there is a connection, because Lee’s Film is largely about the struggle of the central character (Bleek Gilliam as played by Denzel Washington) with obsession, and possession. Whether conscious or unconscious, Bleek’s own frustration with this isolation materializes in a drunken conversation between our two main protagonist, Bleek and the other Alpha in the band “Shadow” (Wesley Snipes). In essence Bleek’s argument is born of an obsession with/of possession, (who owns Jazz) and of audience, (who sees it, curates it). Shadow on the other hand exposes Bleek’s own hypocrisy calling out Bleek’s own exploitative actions, as well as his obsession with possession. Bleek rigidly defines the boundaries of the art refusing it and anyone around him any room, any air, any growth. In a way Bleek has become institutionalized. He understands his art only from within the walls of his isolation…

“Bleek: But the jazz, you know if we had to dep… if we had to depend upon black people to eat, we would starve to death! I mean, you’ve been out there, you’re on the bandstand, you look out into the audience, what do you see? You see Japanese, you see, you see West Germans, you see, you know, Slabobic, anything except our people - it makes no sense. It incenses me that our own people don’t realize our own heritage, our own culture, this is our music, man!
Shadow: THAT’S BULLSHIT!
Bleek: Why?
Shadow: [slurred] It’s all bullsh… Everything, everything you just said is bullshit. Out of all the people in the world, you never gave anybody else, and look, I love you like a step-brother, but you never gave nobody else a chance t- to play their own music, you complain about… That’s right, the people don’t come because you grandiose motherfuckers don’t play shit that they like. If you played the shit that they like, then people would come, simple as that.”

Its important to state here that Bleek’s institutionalization, his obsession, even his willingness to exploit his comrades, is a result of an institution, the result of his own exploitation by this institution. The argument betrays an irritation, a dissatisfaction with not only the audience, but exploitation. The first line of dialogue explores an underlying fear, beyond Bleek’s insistence on a puritanical view of jazz. “If we had to depend” implies latently a fear of the hypothetical. Drawn out from there, this hypothetical belies the source, fear of exploitation. Something Bleek and his band already suffer from. The Flatbush Brothers (John and Nicholas Turturro) prey on Giant and Bleek, who in turn prey on their band. The artist wants an audience, but they also want recognition, recognition as a form of both an expressed, and financial acknowledgment for what it is their art does for the club, for what it does for the Flatbush brothers, for what it does for Bleek, and it is in that way Mo’ Better Blues is a stand-in for the plight of the African American artist in America. Where the isolation of the “other” leaves them vulnerable to predators of all sorts, and their own insecurities, narcissism, and ambition betray their own integrity, and their own people.

Interestingly enough the themes of possession and exploitation extend beyond just the band, and the artist and beyond even the borders of the film, to the women of “Mo’ Better Blues”. There's a predictable, but charming love story between protagonist “Bleek Gilliam” and two women (Indigo  and Clark  played by Joi  Lee, and Cynda Williams), but they too are limited by both Bleek’s misogynoir, and the script.  They have no interiority,  little to no agency,  and we mostly only see them through the lens of Bleek Gilliam which impedes upon the success of the tension in the triangle, and the success of the subplot. As Bleek suffers from inside his prison, the women are only granted limited access to him, and them limited access to us. They show up for what amount to conjugal visits, and they are gone, with little or few defining moments , but what they themselves (the actresses) make of it. Bleek treats them as distractions as he exploits not their art, but their bodies, their time, and their love, and the film treats them as more of a distraction from the central story, rather than integral to it. We only become aware of their agency, their interiority (especially in the case of Cynda William’s Clark) as Bleek becomes aware of it. What Clark, or Indigo do while away from Bleek is a mystery save for exposition, until both demand their respect from Bleek in much the same way Bleek and his band mates have demanded respect from their exploiters.

As a Jazz ode this “Mo’ Better Blues” is smooth, confident,  and struggling  to find its way much like it's protagonist Bleek Gilliam.  Lee's direction in collaboration with Bill Lee's score provide a soulful historical subtext around the art of jazz (by then almost lost to an African American audience). His script functions much like jazz itself - mindful interpretation, and mastered craftsmanship,  interrupted by moments of furious improvisation.  While others decried the latter,  I find the improvisation to be some of the most charming portions of the film.   And the lighting,  costuming, and again Bill Lee's score rank among the best in Spike Lee's illustrious filmography. But the greatest achievement of Mo Better Blues, is its portrayal of a black artist, who struggles to break free from the confinement of exploitation, of isolation, and of possession. And so the greatest achievement of Mo” Better Blues is providing a cinematic parallel for the struggle of black achievement in this America. Our first fight as black artist in america was just to be allowed to create, second to have an audience, the third to be recognized, to be seen as equal to, not as axiomatically inferior, while profiting off our innovation, and ingenious. It is the blues of the many a black artist, the blues of our women, and of many marginalized groups in America, and it only gets better with time.