Freudian Analysis of Spike Lee- Joseph and Michelle

The Freudian Analysis of Spike Lee

  • The film Jungle Fever was loosely based on the relationship Lee had with his mother and father throughout his life.

  • Lee grew up in a predominately Italian-American neighborhood where he would be called the "n" word often
  • His father was a jazz musician who moved his family from Georgia to NYC when Lee was two years old to better his music career.
    • Suffered from a history in heroin abuse.
    • His father and his drug addiction are represented in Samuel L. Jackson's character of "Gator" in Jungle Fever.
    • Relationship has always been strained, in 1992 Bill Lee asked for money to cover household expenses.
    • Lee turned his father down stating that his attitude was "very insulting" -Spike Lee
    • Gator in Jungle Fever asks his parents for money constantly to support his drug addiction; his father constantly turns him down which puts a strain on their relationship.
    • Paulie and his father Lou (Jungle Fever) fighting in this scene represents Spike Lee's emotion and attitude about the betrayal he felt from his father.
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  • Lee's mother worked and taught African-American Literature in an all white school
  • Lee's other siblings attended the white school where his mother taught
  • Lee did not attend so he could go to a public school to be in the company of other black students who he felt comfortable around.
    • Lee felt betrayed by his mother for working in an all white school and wanting him and his siblings to attend. 
  • Lee's mother died in 1977 when he was 20 years old
    • Lee felt abandoned by his mother when she died
    • We see Lee's feelings of powerlessness in the scene with Gator's mother, Lucinda, in Jungle Fever, trying to give him anything to get money.
    • Lucinda is trying to help her son but can't and has no control and that is how Lee feels about his mother's cancer and death. There was nothing he could do and couldn't control the situation.
    • The power Lee wishes he had is shown in the scene where The Good Reverend Doctor kills Gator
    • Lee feels that killing his father would end all the pain in their relationship
    • This scene also shows The Good Reverend Doctor gaining control over Gator which Lee could not do with his mother's death, father's drug addiction, as well as his remarriage to a white woman

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  • Shortly after his mother death, Lee's step-mother, a white Jewish woman, moved in with his father Bill Lee.
    • "My mother wasn't even cold in her grave" -Spike Lee 
  • Lee and his step-mother never got along, he always disapproved of her and her marriage to his father.
    • He believed that they got married because of the stereotypical extramarital sexual relationship based on so-called "black male sexual prowess and white female beauty."
  • We see this one-dimensional portrayal of interracial romance in Jungle Fever
    • The character of Angie represents his step-mother.
    • The relationship between Flipper and Angie represents the relationship between his father and step-mother.
    • Lee feels that this paradigm of a black-white relationship is doomed to failure. Which is also represented in the movie with this scene.
  • In the film, Angie is abandoned by her father for dating a black man.
  • Lee felt abandoned by his father for dating and marrying a white woman.
  • Marry a white woman, Lee felt, was a form of his father abandoning his black heritage for lust.
  • In the film, Lee depicts this by showing Angie being beaten by her father and kicked out of the house for dating a black man.


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