I saw He Got Game for the first time in seven years just a few minutes ago. The last time I saw it was the weekend it came out. Caused me to resurrect the dead so to speak, and bring this old piece out. My ideas on it haven't changed much.
Ruminations
4/26/98
I checked out a piece in Esquire about Denzel Washington, and He’s Got Game , the newest movie from Spike Lee. Given that Washington and Milwaukee’s Ray Allen are starring, I figured that it’d automatically be the greatest basketball movie ever made, with the probably exception of Hoop Dreams on one side, and Hoosiers on the other. At first I thought that this one was probably a keeper—the first Spike Lee movie I’d seen at the theaters since Malcolm X.
Reading John Edgar Wideman’s piece made me think differently though.
This is the plot in a nutshell. When Jesus (Ray Allen, the central character of the film) is a young boy, his father (Washington) pushes him mercilessly, in order to make him a better player. In an argument with his wife about the way he pushes the boy, Washington inadvertently kills her. He’s sent to jail, presumably for life—or near enough to it.
Years pass.
Jesus becomes the best player in the country, pursued by dozens and dozens of college coaches. Washington is given an opportunity to get out of jail early. The only thing he has to do is convince his son to choose the college of the warden (and governor’s) choice. The movie then deals with the various pressures that Jesus faces, from unscrupulous agents, to unscrupulous coaches, to drug dealers, to women. Basketball is used then as the background whereas the tale really deals with fatherless children and their attempt to navigate the concrete jungle.
I still think I’m going to see it, but moreso in order to check out my prediction skills. The tale Spike is trying to tell here doesn’t interest me much, because it plays into the same type of movie that black people have been forced to see themselves in for much of the eighties. The victimization movie. The social pathology flick. Why?
My feelings for basketball are almost as great as if basketball were my child. It is undoubtedly the greatest game I’ve ever had the pleasure to see, the greatest game I have ever participated in. My father, who was all-city back in his day, has been trying to get me to play golf (his basketball playing days were cut wayy short after a broken hip in ’84). He’s even offered to buy me clubs. I had to tell him to put those clubs on hold for a bit, because I just couldn’t see myself taking any of my time playing basketball, and using that time to learn golf. Not that I have a thing against golf mind you—I’ve been watching it with zeal ever since T.C. Chen hit a triple bogie that cost him the U.S. Open back in the mid eighties.
But basketball is my thing. And I’ll be playing until they have to cart me off….
Now from what I know, Spike feels the same way as I do—though I’m pretty sure he hasn’t ever really played. So my question is simple. Why in the hell is he using basketball to tell a pathological story about black people? I’m not saying that Jesus’ story here is one that doesn’t happen. There are people who attempt to live their lives through their children, and basketball is a particularly strong venue. There are also agents, coaches, and other shadowy figures who attempt to corrupt players just so they can ensure themselves an NCAA bid. Furthermore, colleges and universities make a killing economically, off the bodies of their star athletes. But in focusing on the mundane in this case, Spike really misses the point.
The reason why basketball is fast becoming America’s game—and only time will be needed to replace the stories of Joe DiMaggio with those of Magic, Bird, Isiah, and Michael—is because represents the most heroic endeavor, individual improvisation within the confines of group responsibility—made sport. It is the athletic equivalent of jazz, whereas baseball can be likened to European chamber music, with some improvisation but a great deal more of orchestration from above. The effort of taking the raw stuff given to us by life, and transforming it on the fly into something grand and wonderful, truly represents the greatest act of the human spirit, other than giving life. Watching one person do this is joy enough—Michael Jordan for example raising up head and shoulders above the Los Angeles Lakers, his right hand extended for the flush, then changing hands in mid air at the last second and finishing it off with a layup. Or better yet, Julius Erving dribbling on the baseline (again against the Lakers), trying to find a seam, an opening, a gap he can use to go to the hole. Finding no such seam he jumps. From one side of the baseline (underneath the basket) to the other. Making a sure turnover into a reverse layup. Wait, not simply a reverse layup, but one of the greatest individual moves ever seen in sport.
Watching one person do this is joy enough. But to watch an entire team think, respond, modify, change, shift, fuse, all at the speed of thought?
If Spike is in love with the game, as I am, why didn’t he make this movie? A movie about the triumph of the human spirit, about the will to create order out of chaos? The grand dialogue between the individual and the group? By remaining mired in a discourse driven more by current social thought about the African American family in alleged crisis, Spike misses the grand nature of the game that has been molded and changed by the very group pathologized! People don’t play basketball to get out of the "ghetto," they play it because of its transformative potential.
They play it because of the chance to test their improvisational skills. They play it because every time they get on the court, they know they can be part of something truly special. Something dreams are made of. They play it because it truly is the greatest game on Earth. And they play it because they know that this is so, because they made it so.
Maybe if Spike actually sat and watched the games played in the playgrounds of NYC, rather than read about how so-and-so was exploited by so-and-so college, he’d know this. Because as it stands, though Ray Allen’s got game, Spike’s needs a bit of work……..
Addendum 5/4/98
I just checked out the flick today. Spike’s movie was…ok. But it wasn’t about basketball as much as it was about relationships between fathers and sons, as well as between individuals and corporate machines—in this case a basketball prospect and the college recruiting machine. As such it was decent, but Spike’s script has at least three serious problems. The most glaring is the lack of character development. We don’t know what Washington’s character (Jesus’ father) did for a living, we don’t know what McKee’s character (Jesus’ mother) did for a living, in fact we don’t know what any of Jesus’ family members actually do. It’s as if every responsible adult in the film is jobless. Except of course for those adults tied somehow into the machine. The characters’ flatness takes much of the complexity and richness out of the story. And the one time we do get a glimpse into Dawson’s character (Jesus’ girlfriend) for example, it occurs in one scene only.
The second problem has to do with Jovovich’s character—the prostitute that Washington befriends. Her character (which was as maldeveloped as the rest) didn’t really fit within the context of the story. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why she was there—except possibly as a compromise with studio execs who may want to see a white love interest in order to attract a white audience that allegedly won’t watch "black" films without them.
The third problem is a familiar one—the gender dynamic. The most visible female characters in this movie are both prostitutes; Jovovich’s literal one, and Dawson’s figurative one. We do get to see more, but mostly through the extended pathological vision of Jesus’ Big Willie friend, a vision which conveniently allows Spike to show even more women in various acts of sexual degradation. I didn’t see either "Clockers" or "Crooklyn" but I’ve seen every other Lee movie, and I find it more than interesting that you can count the number of real love scenes in ALL of his movies put together, on one hand.
The movement of the film was also somewhat stunted, but it’s difficult to say whether Spike did this on purpose— another way to show how claustrophobic the environment around Jesus was—or on accident.
On final analysis this movie, for me, is like most of Spike’s other movies. Entertaining enough on first glance, but painful to watch afterward. And given that this movie is supposed to be about the glorious game of basketball, I was even more disappointed to find out that this movie was no different..
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