I first came into contact with Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever a few years ago, when a course I was doing used a famous scene from the film as an example of contemporary discourses surrounding identity, and I was immediately transfixed, even by only this one moment from the film. I have never hidden the fact that I am an ardent admirer of Lee, and I have slowly been exploring his career in more detail of late, and it seemed like the right time to finally see Jungle Fever, a film I always had at the back of my mind but never got around to watching. In many ways, Jungle Fever is everything we’d expect from a great Spike Lee film – contemporary, hip and socially-relevant, with scathing commentary, terrific performances and a story that is one of his most shockingly profound, and amongst his very best. Jungle Fever is Lee at his most furious, but also at his most poetic, and continuing from his four previous films (She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze, Mo’ Better Blues and his seminal masterpiece, Do the Right Thing), it is an indictment on contemporary New York culture, specifically Brooklyn, encompassing the mentalities of different groups residing in the same location, but seeming to be worlds apart due to their varying mindsets. I mean no disrespect to Woody Allen, but there has never been a filmmaker more intricate in how they represent New York City as Spike Lee, with Jungle Fever being amongst the bleakest but truthful looks at the city and its various inhabitants.
The film centres on the curiously-named Flipper Purify (Wesley Snipes), a successful architect who is at the top of his profession (also being the only person of colour working at the firm he helped establish and toiled over), and has a loving wife, Drew (Lonette McKee) and a daughter he adores, Ming (Veronica Timbers). His life seems to be comfortable, and even if he is hunting a promotion he isn’t likely to get, he’s content and everything seems to be working in his favor. However, he soon encounters the woman who will be his secretary going forward – Angela “Angie” Tucci (Annabella Sciorra), a young Italian-American woman who lives with her father (Frank Vincent) and brothers (Michael Imperioli and David Dundara), serving as their caretaker and matriarchal figure after her mother died prior to the events of the film. Flipper and Angie strike up a friendship, which eventually spirals into a passionate romance that they keep extremely secretive as far as possible – not only because Flipper is married, but also because despite the perceived progressive nature of society, an interracial marriage is still looked on as unfavorable, from both sides. The two central characters have to deal with the repercussions of their relationship becoming public after they are accidentally outed, and questions of the root of their romance start to be questioned by the characters themselves – did they truly find something meaningful between them, a profound connection that spurred romance, or were they both just curious about what it would be like to be with someone of a different race – essentially, are they in love, or do they just have “jungle fever”?
Lee always assembles great casts for his film, and Jungle Fever is one of his best. Wesley Snipes once again collaborates with Lee, taking on the main role of Flipper, in what is most certainly his finest performance, a subtle exploration of a man who has his entire life overturned from one bad judgment spurred on by his insatiable curiosity. While Snipes doesn’t have the same charisma as some of Lee’s previous and subsequent leads, he is excellent in this role, showing the concealed sensitivity lurking beneath the surface of a seemingly well-composed, confident man who is questioning his own African-American identity. Annabella Sciorra (who I personally find to be an astonishing but underrated actress) is exceptional in the other lead role, playing the fragile Italian-American woman who begins a passionate romance with a man who she possibly loves but also serves to be a vessel upon which she can assert her own curiosity.
Snipes and Sciorra lead the film well, but the supporting cast also has some terrific performances, such as that of the iconic Samuel L. Jackson in one of his breakthrough roles as Flipper’s crackhead brother who proudly expresses his addiction with enthusiastic gusto. Jackson, who is normally typecast in stern and intense roles, is a revelation here, with his excessive performance being one of the highlights of the film. Veteran performers Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee (who I personally believe could do no wrong as far as performances were concerned) collaborate with Lee again, with Dee’s performance being particularly noteworthy, with loving but blindly-trusting character showing the true extent to which someone will go for those they love. John Turturro, who is generally terrific, gives another great performance in a Lee film, with his Paulie being a natural antidote to his vitriolic character Pino in Do the Right Thing. Turturro is one of Lee’s most notable collaborators, working with him in nine different films, and the actor’s everyman persona and chameleonic ability to play different kinds of characters have been used exceptionally well by Lee. The film is also worth watching for very early performances from Halle Berry and Queen Latifah, both of which would go on to forge their own trailblazing careers that filmmakers like Lee helped lead the way towards. As a whole, the cast of Jungle Fever is terrific, each actor being pivotal to the story and effortlessly capable of playing these roles with natural rhythm and defiant fury.
We can look at Jungle Fever from the perspective of two major themes, with the first being the more central to the storyline – race. Lee is obviously not a filmmaker adverse to focusing on racial tensions, with this being a theme in many (although not all) of his films, and his anger is often expressed in the most marvelously poetic ways. Jungle Fever is one of his most bitter indictments on the nature of race relations in a contemporary landscape, and he develops some of the themes that he looked at in his previous films, and instead of looking purely at the African-American perspective, as he had done previously, Lee goes slightly further in focusing on an interracial relationship, which allows him the opportunity to explore the perspective of both sides of the relationship, which works exceptionally well in juxtapose the differing circumstances some feel in these instances, as well as showing the ways that they are eerily similar. I have always found Lee a remarkable filmmaker, especially in how he looks at race, because while many of his films are distinctively (and proudly) focused on African-American experiences, he is able to look at different cultures with a blend of biting satire and sensitive intricacy, which makes Lee much more than just a director focused on “black” issues, and more of a director focused on “American” issues as a whole. Jungle Fever offers the viewer Lee’s most poignant representation of contemporary tensions that existed then, and unfortunately still do today, and through the lens of Lee’s unflinchingly creative but socially-conscious eye, Jungle Fever is a tremendously resonant and moving film.
In mentioning Lee’s consistent representation of issues from an African-American standpoint, we just need to note that despite his films having similar themes, they are not homogenous, and they all look at different ideas and issues pertaining to the overarching themes. In Jungle Fever, we are exposed to a story about questioning one’s identity through the identities of others. Flipper Purity is a man who feels like an outsider, regardless of the context he is in: he works at a firm that is almost exclusively composed of Caucasians, where despite being considerably talented and influential in the growth of the company, his ethnicity prevents him from earning what he believes he is entitled to, whether in terms of salary or positions of authority within the company he helped set the foundations for. He’s distant from his parents, and he doesn’t socialize with other black people, with his only friend being his neighbor, from which he also eventually drifts. He questions his own identity to find a sense of belonging. Angie’s experiences are the same – she is expected to adhere to a strict set of social conventions, and deviating from them results in traumatic expulsion, not only from her familial unit but from the society she grew up in general. Jungle Fever is a bleak film, because it looks at the concept of crises of identity in a way that is profoundly brutal, but also elegant, with the film being Lee’s free-form, but meticulous, exploration of racial tensions in a way that is bold but sensitive, not catering to a particular niche, but rather commenting on social conventions and perceptions, dismantling preconceived notions of race and investigating different experiences and the struggles of identity that come with them.
Racism is a problem akin to a social plague that has persisted for centuries, and Lee knows that the audience is well-aware of this fact. Lee is a socially-aware filmmaker and he is deeply conscious of social issues, but he is also a filmmaker who doesn’t ever feel the need to be condescending in looking at these issues, because he doesn’t make these films to introduce social issues into the public consciousness, he uses the medium of film to represent these issues, to show the intricate influences of these tensions that are often missing from overarching histories of ethnic relations. In this regard, Lee is a profoundly social filmmaker, focusing his attention almost solely on the realm of the individual experiences of his ordinary characters. Therefore, his intention in films like Jungle Fever is not to reiterate that racism is awful – it is to show the effects racism has, both on society and on individuals, and how even living within an era where many people pride themselves on having progressive mindsets, there are still some situations that may not be illegal, but are still considered somewhat taboo. It shows the mental shift from the perception of an interracial relationship being taboo because of its illegality, to a more subtle but no-less harmful idea of it being unacceptable because it makes some particularly fragile people uncomfortable or is oppositional to their particular viewpoint. It looks boldly at both sides of the relationship, focusing on how some may perceive such a relationship as being representative of great machismo, while others view it as adverse to common decency. The themes Lee looks at in this film are extraordinary, and I’ve mentioned it before, but this film is one filled with the filmmaker’s unbridled rage towards social perceptions of race relations, and his response is stark but poignant, which only makes Jungle Fever one of his most resonant films.
Interestingly, Lee weaves a seemingly-inconsequential story into Jungle Fever, one that I thought didn’t bear much relevance to the central theme. It is the second major concept I alluded to previously, the theme of drug addiction. The Purity brothers are polar opposites – Flipper is decent, wholesome and a representation of a successful man. Gator is a thieving, manipulative crackhead who is willing to hurt even those who love him the most just to get his next fix. Initially, I thought this was Lee’s intention in including this story in the film (because it otherwise doesn’t do very much in changing the story, rather being an added element of stark cultural realism), but it became clear that there was a deeper intention in Gator’s story, as it helped progress Flipper’s own narrative, especially in a scene towards the beginning of the third act, when Flipper goes in search of his brother to retrieve the television that Gator had stolen from their parents. As Flipper walks down this road, brimming with drug dealers, gangsters, and prostitutes, he is uncomfortably aware of how detached he is from society – these people know him, and he knows them – yet, he is not a part of their society, nor does he feel like a part of any society, being a perpetual outsider through his own choices.
Yet, this scene doesn’t comment on purely African-American culture, relating it to sordid activities that occur outside Flipper’s world – the contrary, in fact – in this scene, as well as the following one where Flipper enters a notorious crack-house, we see people of all backgrounds, those of different races, all gathered with a common purpose. This was perhaps the most pivotal scene in the film, as it summarised everything Lee was trying to say with this film: racial tensions and differences between ethnic groups are artificial perceptions, with something visceral and brutal like drug addiction not being discriminatory or exclusive. Consider that Gator is one of the only characters that does not chastise the relationship between Flipper and Angie (ulterior motives aside), and you come to a startling conclusion as to what Lee is trying to say here: sometimes, the most vicious, hateful people are those that consider themselves to be moral paragons and socially-decent, upstanding citizens, which is not the case here. Lee deftly navigates themes of racism, drug addiction, class conflict and relationships in this complex, brilliant social drama.
Jungle Fever is an extraordinary film and one that stands as one of Lee’s very best works. It may not reach the impossible heights of Do the Right Thing, but it is still a very effective, profoundly moving drama that takes an unflinching look at social issues, specifically those pertaining to racism, in a way that is bleak but resonant. The performances in the film are exceptional, with standouts being Snipes, Sciorra, and Jackson, who commit themselves relentlessly into these complex roles, bringing substantial nuance and a natural sensitivity to the characters. The film, as a whole, is a masterful achievement. Biting, sardonic and unsettling, the anger Lee feels towards racial tensions are palpable, and it proves the point that he is not only a talented filmmaker – he is an essential one, crafting works that have the potential to provoke thought and incite conversations that need to be had. The fact that Jungle Fever still feels timely and relevant today, nearly three decades after its release, is upsetting and troubling. However, if more daring filmmakers attempt to make such bold films, we might see some form of change, even if it is just the start of a discussion on any of the complex issues represented in this film. Jungle Fever is an extraordinary film and reaffirms my utter admiration for the masterful Spike Lee, who is one of the finest living American filmmakers, whose provocative and intricate portrayals of society being stark and disquietingly beautiful, with this very film showing this in perfect clarity and bleak melancholy. Quite simply a tremendous, moving film, the boldness of which is rarely ever seen in contemporary cinema.
The Postmodern Pelican 