NFL
By: Matt Overton
The Fifth Joint
The moment Stevie Wonder’s song started playing over the well-animated, New York-style credits, I could tell Spike Lee was cooking with Jungle Fever. Released in 1991, Jungle Fever was Spike’s fifth feature film, and it is abundantly clear that he found his artistic footing by this point in his career. This picture is oozing with style, interesting characters, and numerous ideas related to Love. It’s also a loving portrait of Harlem and all of its inhabitants, problems and all.
Jungle Fever attempts to tackle a lot of issues like the crack epidemic, Black love, interracial love, fatherly love, and the absence of a mother’s love. It’s all centered around Wesley Snipes as Flip, a successful architect who has almost made partner at the otherwise all white firm where he works. He makes sweet love to his wife on the regular and walks his daughter to school. It’s an all-around high-functioning nuclear family, but something as simple as curiosity brings Flip’s world crashing down.
When he’s assigned a new Italian secretary at work, Angie quickly becomes a distraction for Flip. It doesn’t take long before his curiosity about white women leads him to cheating on his wife with her, right there in the middle of the office after a late-night grind sesh. The resulting fallout is disastrous for every involved party. Flip and Lucinda’s marriage is ruined, as is Angie’s relationship with her father and the one with her casual high school sweetheart. We follow this one fatal choice and the spicy waves that it sends throughout New York City.
This movie spends a lot of time focusing on father-son relationships. Ossie Davis is the father of Flip, and his older brother, Gator, played by Samuel L Jackson, while Frank Vincent is Angie’s dad. Neither of these men are pleased when they hear their children are “spoiling” their bloodline with a different race. The discussions had in this film about interracial relationships and the kind of discrimination minorities are constantly battling in terms of dating were the strongest narrative feature. It manages to point out the hypocrisy that we all live with in a digestible but poignant way—whether or not you’re contributing to the problem or actively fighting it, it’s still very prevalent today.
Jungle Fever was an unexpected hit. Based on the premise, I went into this assuming Spike was a little more horned up than usual and wanted to film a hot, salacious drama. He certainly succeeded in that manner, but he also managed to weave a lot of important commentary on interracial relationships. I loved the split story and the way it cut between Flip’s plight with his parents and family, and Angie’s very Italian family. Getting Vincent to play the father was perfect casting. Spike definitely told them to act as Italian as possible, and it pays off. Plus, you get Sam Jackson popping up in the story sporadically with the most tweaked-out, crackhead energy ever. This was a riot.
