Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee

Directors Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee emerged as filmmakers toward the end of the 1960s, when the breakdown of the studio system paved the way for new production partnerships and gave more creative authority to directors, actors, and writers. In what has come to be called the “Indie” movement, these directors were able to explore ethno-racial themes with more frankness than previously allowed. From the perspectives of their own minority communities, Scorsese, Allen, and Lee dramatized and critiqued the challenges this restless, ethno-racial underclass posed to the “White Republic” imagined by the Founding Fathers. The three directors whose work is at the heart of this book explore the question of how identity formation is a process of negotiation, particularly among America’s ethno-racial minorities. They emphasize the stresses related to the double burden in the assimilative process of patterning oneself after the majoritarian culture, while acknowledging in complex ways the culture of the community of origin. Annie Hall tells Alvie Singer, “you’re a real Jew.” Buggin’ Out instructs his homeboy friend, “Stay Black, Mookie!” What implications do these phrases carry? Will Alvie have a chance to modify his identity? Should he? Will Mookie honor his friend’s admonition? Is “black” also susceptible to a cultural makeover? Is identity a personal choice? This book highlights how various films by these three directors explore the ways in which “cultural capital” (musical, artistic, intellectual, athletic, etc.) is used to erase “ethno-racial taint” (skin tones, supposed biological “traits,” offensive cultural habits). The formula ordains that assimilation and interculturation will be asymmetrical, favoring those groups or individuals who bring with them the most cultural capital.

In the early 1990s—as independent films began to reflect the social tumult of US society—television and film producer James Scott (emer., English and film studies) began to follow the specific issues of identity, ethnicity, and race as treated in the films of Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee. Scott chose these three because they represent social groups that had well-documented struggles with identity, social integration, and justice. This book derives from his investigations. Scott introduces his analyses with an extensive preface and summarizes his observations in an epilogue. He devotes a chapter to each filmmaker, and each receives a thorough consideration. Each film selected for study gets a detailed analysis based on, among other things, characters, plot structure, and directorial decisions. In addition, Scott traces the social influences through key historians, among them Frederick Jackson Turner, Grant Madison, and Israel Zangwell. The volume is enhanced by a 280-item bibliography and a 17-page index. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty., In a sequence of incisive analyses, James F. Scott demonstrates the foundational importance of ethnicity and race in the works of three of America’s most prominent film directors. His attentive readings take due account of the congruities and divergences in each director’s treatment of these major themes, most especially as they bear upon personal and artistic development and equally upon current issues of social identity and conflict., Jim Scott’s, erudite, energetic, and wonderfully written book, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in the American Independent Film provides a crucial glimpse into an important area of the aesthetic production of the 1990s and the way the decade has affected the 21st century understanding of what it means to be an American. This book easily stands with The People v. O. J. Simpson as a major glimpse into the emerging picture of what now must be seen as one of the most important decades of the previous century.

James F. Scott is professor emeritus of English and film studies at Saint Louis University.