School Daze is a 1988 musical-drama film, written and directed by Spike Lee, and starring Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, and Tisha Campbell. Based in part on Spike Lee's experiences at Atlanta's Morehouse College, it is a story about fraternity and sorority members clashing with other students at a historically black college during homecoming weekend. School Daze was the second feature film directed by Spike Lee, and was released on February 12, 1988 by Columbia Pictures.(wikipedia)Plot Summary (wikipedia)
Vaughn "Dap" Dunlap (Laurence Fishburne) is a politically conscious African American student who leads anti-apartheid demonstrations encouraging students and school administrators to completely divest from South Africa. He also eschews the buffoonery and social climbing of the Greek fraternal system. Dap's craven younger cousin, Half-Pint (Spike Lee), is pledging Gamma Phi Gamma (also known as G-Phi-G or simply G-Phi) fraternity and is willing to endure any humiliation to join the fraternity. While Half-Pint tries unsuccessfully to impress the Gammas with his inept womanizing, Dap engages in philosophical debates with Rachel (Kyme), his girlfriend, as well as other Mission students.
Half-Pint eventually survives the pledge initiation and joins G-Phi. Shortly afterwards, his house president Julian, aka Big Brother Almighty (Giancarlo Esposito), manipulated his girlfriend Jane (Tisha Campbell) to prove her love to him. He brings Jane to Half-Pint (whom he discovered was a virgin during pledge) and tells him, in order to become an official Gamma man, he must lose his virginity by having sex with Jane. After Half-Pint's last test, Julian ruthlessly breaks up with Jane, claiming she loved Gamma Phi Gamma and not him. After Half-Pint brags to Dap about his episode with Jane, Dap loses all respect for him and shoves him away, declaring "You're not my cousin!" The movie ends the following morning, with Dap running through the campus and to the middle of the school courtyard, yelling "Wake up!"
Throughout the film, light-skinned African American women of the Gamma Rays (a women's auxiliary to the Gamma Phi Gamma fraternity) battle it out with their, Afro-headed fellow co-eds. The students at Mission College also battle with the local unemployed and uneducated people living around the campus, who resent the Mission students for taking all of the good jobs.
Musical performances are throughout, including the production "Good or Bad Hair", a fantasy dis-fest between the Wannabes and Jigaboos, and "Be Alone Tonight" performed by Campbell (as Jane Toussaint and her Royal Court) at a talent competition. The go-go anthem "Da Butt" is performed by the group E.U. during the after-party for the Gammites.
I chose to use school daze as one of my media blogs because I think they touched on alot of controversal issues that dealt with racism among blacks and how we see each other based on our appearances and beliefs. Alot of different scenes stood out in this movie but for me it had to be the scene where the Gamma Rays and the Afro centric women did the musical number "Good Hair, Bad Hair" in which both poke fun at eachothers appearances and make claims that on is a "jiggaboo" and the other is a "wannabe" mainly because the wannabes were the blacks that were lightskinned, wore lighter contacts and had the long hair which did boil over with the "jiggaboos" who felt that they were trying to be white and were neglecting their black heritage by not wearing their hair natural.
I think this scene in this movie connects with Johnson's article "Capitalism, Class, and the matrix of domination because in that article Johnson explains how capitalist came up with different ways to seperate whites from the blacks and even from each other so they can continue to gain profit from it. And it also connects with Takaki when he talked about the Giddy Multitude and the ways the slave owners manipulated blacks and turned them against each other by splitting them up into categories like field slaves and house slaves. I think this movie touches on how we as a race are told to look and act to be considered beautiful and to blend it and that racism still exists within our own race.
watch the video of the "Good Hair, Bad Hair" here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtfEmTHeYNw
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