HOW TO DEAL WITH THE FAR RIGHT: RECOVERING THE PAST IN SPIKE LEE'S BLACKKKLANSMAN MOVIE (2018).

• Grant number: 24/12817-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: May 01, 2025
• End date: April 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of America
• Principal Investigator: Mary Anne Junqueira
• Grantee: Guilherme Colombara Rossatto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research project proposes an analysis of the historical film BlacKkKlansman by black filmmaker Spike Lee, released in 2018, during the far right government of Donald Trump. Based on real events, the movie details the actions of Ron Stallworth, the black policeman who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan supremacist militia in 1978. The filmmaker and activist of the black movement in the United States revisits the period of Black Power uprising in the country. In addition, he rehabilitates and pays homage to a subgenre, also from the 1970s, known as blaxploitation. A main characteristic of this subgenre was that it was produced by black people, aimed at the community, questioning the subordinate and passive role of the African-American characters of the period. We consider that it deals with the rise to power of the far right in the United States in 2016, represented in the movie by the racist Ku Klux Klan militia, calling for forms of action and resistance based on re-significations of the past.