Artists rewrite history

Although he may be a legendary director and screenwriter, when it comes to portraying the lives of queer, polyamorous women in film, Spike Lee has no clue what he is doing. All evidence for this lies in She’s Gotta Have It, a television show written and directed by Lee, released in 2017—a remake of his (frankly terrible) directorial debut from 1983. If the misogyny, homophobia, and slut-shaming was atrocious in the original movie, it is only marginally better in the TV show remake. 

The show follows the life of Nola Darling, a fictional 20-something-year-old Black, queer, polyamorous woman painter and multi-disciplinary artist navigating an increasingly gentrified Brooklyn. It only takes a few minutes of the first episode to realise that she is the embodied mouthpiece of Lee’s wildest fantasies. 

It appears sadistic to put myself through two seasons of a heterosexist show—and yet I did. Lee does something, perhaps best exemplified in episode four of season two, that made me keep watching. 

In the episode, called “#NationTime,” Nola is invited to Martha’s Vineyard—a real place on an island off Cape Cod—for an all-Black artist residency. During the retreat, the character Nola Darling meets incredibly talented, real-life Black visual artists such as Carrie Mae Weems, Amy Sherald, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and others. Playing themselves, the artists engage in fascinating conversations with fictional characters such as Nola about the power and importance of Black art under a Trump presidency.

Episode four of season two, really, is more documentary than fiction. For example, Amy Sherald—the world-renowned painter who made Michelle Obama’s official White House portrait—gets a whole scene to herself where she talks about what the Obama project meant to her and the Black artist community in the United States. The show also hints to the history of Martha’s Vineyard, which was a refuge for Black indentured labourers and previously enslaved individuals trying to start a free life. It has now become a popular vacation destination for wealthy Black tourists, and a hub for Black arts and culture. But perhaps my favourite self-referential moment that fuses reality and fiction occurs when Nola meets Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, the real-life artist and activist whose work Nola’s “fake” art, which appears multiple times throughout the show, is based on. I love the way Lee weaves and blurs reality and fiction throughout the story. 

Spike Lee builds an episode—and a whole show, really—that merges reality and fiction to create a story that celebrates Black American excellence in visual art and educates audiences about the essential contribution Black artists around the world are bringing to the art world. 

This is not new for the director. Spike Lee has captivated audiences for over thirty years—from 1989’s Do The Right Thing to 2018’s BlacKkKlansman—by making movies that rewrite racism in Black history. From historical issues such as gentrification, to the Vietnam War, and civil rights, Black Americans have been, and continue to be, chronically misrepresented. Lee writes over these white supremacist historical narratives by weaving the fictional with the fantastical, the personal with the political, to create stories of Black excellence that are both history lesson and film. 

Although it does beg the question: is Spike Lee really re-shaping the historical narrative of Black people in film if he is fetishizing Black queer and polyamorous women? No, and that is why, ultimately, I don’t recommend the show. Black women, Black queer and trans folks, and non-monogamous Black individuals need to be part of the historical re-writing. 

Although Spike Lee was one of the pioneers of Black historical fiction in film, he by no means perfected the genre. There are lessons to be drawn from him, no doubt, but a lot to be improved on. That is why I prefer to recommend other works—like Rebecca Hall’s movie Passing (2021)—that mix history and fiction while simultaneously staying true to Black queer and polyamorous women. 

Meet the Artists

Meet some of the incredible artists featured in the episode! 

1. Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is a Brooklyn-based street artist and activist. She created the Stop Telling Women to Smile project, which evolved from a wheat paste art collection to a well-known campaign against street harassment. 
2. Carrie Mae Weems is a world-renowned photographer and multi-disciplinary artist from Oregon, now working in Brooklyn. The techniques she uses to take her photos, like in The Kitchen Table Series, have rewritten the rules of modern photography. 
3. Tschabalala Self is a painter, collage artist, and sculptor based in Connecticut. She explores themes such as sexualization and body image through depictions of the Black female body.
4. Doreen Garner is a sculptor (and tattoo artist!) living in Brooklyn. She creates life-like “corporeal sculptures” that highlight the trauma Black people experience due to the history of medical racism in the United States. 
5. LaToya Ruby Frazier is a photographer best known for her Flint is Family series that sheds light on the water contamination issues Black families are facing in Flint, Michigan. Her work is her tool for community advocacy. 
6. Titus Kaphar is a painter from Michigan. Trained as a classic portrait artist, he subverts artistic norms by tearing and defacing his paintings to turn them into sculpture-like artifacts. 
7. Juliana Huxtable is a queer visual artist, writer, and DJ currently living in Berlin. Her art takes various forms but always centresBlack queer youth, social media, and nightlife subcultures. 
8. Amy Sherald is a portrait painter from Georgia. She is best known for her distinctive painting style, which mixes simplified realism with grayed skin tones, and her portrait of Michelle Obama.