When Spike Lee took over directorial duties from his friend and mentor Martin Scorsese, his intention for “Clockers” was to put the, “final nail in the coffin” of the Hood genre, the cycle of black urban movies had started in 1991 with John Singleton’s devastating “Boyz n the Hood” but by 1996 it was ripe for third-rate parody by the Wayan brothers in, “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.”
Lee was determined that “Clockers’ would not be lumped together with the genre’s diminishing returns and, 25 years later, his film is just as vital when viewed through the prism of Trump’s Amerikkka.
“Clockers” was based upon Richard Price’s 1992 novel that alternates viewpoints between low-level crack dealer Strike and seasoned homicide detective Rocco Klein. Strike sells crack for the Faginesque Rodney Little and is kept in check by his terrifying enforcer Errol Barnes. Strike wants to get on, but to be promoted Rodney tasks him to kill another dealer, Darryl Adams. When Darryl is shot four times, Strike’s hardworking brother Victor turns himself in. Rocco doesn’t buy it and suspects Victor is covering up for Strike and Rodney.
Lee shifted the emphasis of the original script from Rocco to Strike as he wanted his version to reflect that black people in America were not (as seen by white America), “one monolithic group” stereotyped by gangster rap, drug addiction and sportswear. Lee said that his film offered, “some hope and optimism” for the future, that most people in the projects were, “hard-working, decent people” like Victor who deplored the gang violence.
Lee’s rejection of the Hood genre is made immediately clear through his opening montage of slain gang members, their bodies grotesquely mutilated by gun shots. Lee used actors to meticulously reconstruct each death from the New York Crime Scene Unit’s chilling Family Album. His counter-intuitive choice of Marc Dorsey’s mournfully uplifting, “People in Search of a Life” rather than a track from The Wu Tang Clan, makes us find a serene beauty in death, a sense of startling performance art that urges us to connect with these young men and their shattered hopes and dreams even when they are face down in a dumpster.
The critique of gangsta rap is evident straight from the opening scene when Strike’s crew argue if Chuck D from Public Enemy is hardcore or not as he, “never shot nobody.” For many, including Lee, the rise of gangsta rap destroyed the black political enlightenment that rappers like Chuck D and KRS 1 were at the forefront of on their respective albums, “It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,” and “By All Means Necessary.” As rap music entered the mainstream and lost its political edge, the white establishment breathed a collective sigh of relief, as deep down, it could handle the black rapper as a stereotypical hood but lost their shit when they taught society about Malcolm X and The Black Panthers.
Chuck D’s well-known statement, “Rap is black America’s TV station. It gives a whole perspective of what exists and what black life is about” is lost on Strike and his crew. When Andre, the mountainous community cop who has watched a generation of kids grow up to become dealers, beats Strike for embroiling a young boy, Tyrone in a murder charge, he shouts, “It’s motherfuckers like you that mugged Rosa Parks.” Strike shouts back, “Who the fuck is Rosa Parks?” Not only has the education system failed black youth in “Clockers”, but the safety net put in place by rappers like Chuck D has been severed by the rise of gangsta rap in the 1990s.
Lee rams this point home during the electrifying sequence when Tyrone shoots Errol Barnes. As we cut between Tyrone riding his BMX and Errol Barnes contorting and writhing his smack-filled body, KRS 1’s “Outta Here” booms across the screen. Later lyrics in the track point to DJ Scott La Rock who was murdered in 1987. KRS 1 raps,
I had nothin’ left and it was scary
So I dropped By All Means Necessary
Another hip-hop group that was a friend of me
Was a revolution crew called Public Enemy
It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
These two albums set off consciousness in rap
But all along, I’m still lookin’ around
And all I can see are these rap groups fallin’ down
Do you ever think about when you outta here?
Condominium and beach house outta here?
Credit cards and bank accounts outta here?
No doubt BDP is old school, be we ain’t goin’ out!
When Lee uses other rap tracks, they are portrayed as part of the problem, glamorizing gun culture on TV screens in the Cool Breeze bar, reminiscent of Oliver Stone’s constant media projections in ‘Natural Born Killers.” Lee vocalises his thoughts through Rocco when the detective coaches Tyrone through his self-defence statement for killing Errol. Rocco pierces Tyrone’s subconscious as Lee blurs reality with Rocco’s new version of events, appearing in the frame like a guardian angel, “Don’t your friends make fun of you when you get straight As, speak correct English, attend school, go to classes, don’t hang out?”
In a later interview, Lee continues Rocco’s argument: “If you strive to become educated and get your grades and speak correct English and be able to speak a sentence without profanity, then you are ridiculed and ostracized as being a ‘white boy’ or ‘white girl’ or ‘sellout’, an ‘oreo’, which is crazy. But if you’re on the corner, drinkin’ a 40, smokin’ a blunt, holding your privates, then you’re keepin’ it real. And that is pathological, that is genocide.”
He may be Tyrone’s guardian angel but Rocco is definitely no saint. Like the other New York cops, Rocco struts around in a white jacket like a movie star onto the crime scenes surrounded by the black community he is supposed to serve. They trade stinging racist remarks about the bloody murder victims they prod and probe, desensitised to the constant conveyor belt of bodies. Other cops strip search Strike’s crew in front of their family and neighbours, a ritual humiliation, grabbing jaws like slave traders inspecting the health of their stock. The Vice Squad lean on Strike for protection whilst offering to sell stolen product to Rodney.
Andre and the other black cops are witness to the constant racism committed by their white comrades and pull them up when they’ve heard and had enough. They, like the hardworking, church-fearing, black community are a continuation of Pino’s twisted logic in Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” when he tries to explain to Mookie why his favourite athletes and movie stars are black when he hates black people: “They’re black but they’re not really black, they’re more than black.”
Rocco and his partners compartmentalise their prejudice in much the same way as Pino. When Strike asks why Rocco fought so hard for the truth, he asks, “Brothers killin’ brothers ain’t no big thing, Blasé, blasé. What made you care about me, my brother Victor, Darryl Adams, Tyrone?” Rocco doesn’t answer him. He still can’t admit to Strike – and, more importantly, himself – that he might care, that his racism was wrong or more likely that solving this case was the one decent thing he had achieved during his long career. Later in the film’s coda, Rocco is quiet and sombre, wearing a muted brown suit, respectfully crossing the police tape.
When “Clockers” was released in 1995, the world was still awaiting the verdict of the OJ Simpson murder trial. Lee himself was still on the fence over whether Simpson was guilty or not. Black and white America were largely divided over the case with many African Americans believing Simpson was innocent. When detective Mark Furhman took the stand and was revealed to be a racist who had planted evidence to frame suspects in other cases, this only confirmed their lived experience. Fast forward to 2020 and even the threat of police officers being filmed killing innocent black men and women still doesn’t stop Jacob Blake being shot in the back multiple times in Wisconsin.
As always, Lee brings nuance and fairness to his films rather than solely blaming white America for Strike’s situation. Lee’s strong response to the death of George Floyd was to intercut footage of his horrific death with Radio Raheem’s strangulation in “Do the Right Thing” and Eric Garner’s murder. This was tempered with Lee’s optimism that so many white Americans took to the streets to protest their deaths. Rodney Little is not glamourised or shown as a product of his environment, nor does he initiate gangland jump-ins like in Dennis Hopper’s “Colors.” Lee reveals the insidious grooming process that Rodney practices on the neighbourhood kids, becoming their father figure and how Strike’s generation will in turn use the same tactics to entrap Tyrone and others like him, “If God created anything better than crack cocaine he kept that shit for hisself.”
25 years on and you have to respect Lee’s continued optimism in the face of Trump’s increasingly fascist regime. But Lee said back in 1995 when promoting “Clockers” that his slave ancestors, “had to be optimistic or we wouldn’t be here today.” What cannot be denied are the powerful performances throughout; Mekhi Phifer, fresh faced and brilliant in his debut role as Strike, Harvey Keitel, stoic as Rocco, Keith David, imperious as Andre, Delroy Lindo’s signature performance as Rodney and Isaiah Washington’s heart-breaking nobility when portraying Victor’s self-loathing struggle with his identity as a black father trying to escape the projects. And those final shots of Strike, nose to the glass window of his first train journey promise a golden future.
Let’s hope America has a golden future in November 2020 by putting the final nail in the coffin of Trump’s ever-diminishing presidency.