6/17/2023 0 Comments College daze show![]() ![]() Has it finally started? What some of us prayed and worked and believed would-must-happen, wondering when, because so few of us here in America even seemed to know what was going on in South Africa, nor cared to hear. But blood will tell, and now the blood is speaking. "So much Black blood has been shed upon that land, I thought, and so much more will fall. As writer and activist Audre Lorde wrote in her revolutionary text A Burst of Light: Lee uses the backdrop of Mission College's homecoming weekend to juxtapose the capitalist mindset of American exceptionalism that the Black middle class had adopted in the '80s with the wider global struggle that endures outside the cushy confines of new money, unable to access the comforts and safety of success. School Daze is a college musical comedy with a conscience beneath the hijinks lies a bleeding heart for those suffering under apartheid in South Africa. Taking the momentum from his low-budget black-and-white first feature, She’s Gotta Have It, to shoot on a much larger budget, Lee went directly to the campuses of real-life HBCUs Spelman, Morehouse, Clark Atlanta University, and Morris Brown to create a level of authenticity for the fictional Mission College and its diverse array of Black students-in glorious full color. School Daze is keen to acknowledge this, while also critiquing the effects of the aspirational status mentality that can often blind us to the suffering of the African diaspora. They provide Black people with a space all our own to learn and grow with each other away from racial biases, and they're often the foundation of networks of Black professionals, which prioritize the success and prosperity of Black people. In a nation built on slavery and white supremacy, the importance of HBCUs cannot be overstated. Spike Lee’s 1988 sophomore feature took a critical look at Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), revealing their beauty and complexity in a decade where Black faces were an afterthought in media. Before A Different World came into its own, before Higher Learning and Dear White People critiqued the fraught relationship between Black students and white students at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs), and before grown-ish, there was School Daze. ![]()
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