Spike Lee Retrospective: "Summer of Sam"
The United States has long thought itself the picture of strength and resolve—of machismo—but what is oft more apparent in its demonstrations of bravado, whether by fraternities or the National Guard, is how fear serves as the nation’s real impetus. Spike Lee, whose new film, Highest 2 Lowest, playing in theatres now, is acutely aware of this dynamic, particularly as it works to bubble the melting pot of so-called democratic society. His twelfth feature, Summer of Sam, though less racially-charged in its tensions than his previous features, is no less poignant in its depiction of this fear-driven volatility.
Like Do the Right Thing, Summer of Sam zeros in on the tribulations of a neighbourhood in a New York borough—The Bronx, in this case—and it also unfolds during one particularly hot summer. It’s 1977, and the collective anxiety surrounding the recent string of “Son of Sam” killings—which actually happened—is reaching a fever pitch. For Vinny (John Leguizamo), his childhood buddy Ritchie (Adrien Brody), and for many of the neighbourhood’s Italian-American inhabitants, this means masking fear by asserting one’s aggression and sexuality in all the wrong places. Vinny ritualistically cheats on and gaslights his newlywed, Dionna (Mira Sorvino), while Ritchie pours himself into the UK punk lifestyle.
The ”Son of Sam” killer, meanwhile is relegated to the footnotes of the narrative, shown only briefly, and enshrouded in shadows or putrid, over-exposed lighting. We aren’t meant to try to understand this sadistic murderer; instead, Lee wants us considering the ripple effects that these cold-blooded killings have on a hyper-proud, hyper-macho and fiercely tight-knit community—one that is already more insecure and paranoid than it cares to admit. Vinny and his friends represent the stereotypical "guidos" of 70s, the wish-they-were-the-mob-but-aren't-the-mob proto-bros who value above all else those who are loyal, local, and familiar. When Ritchie returns home sporting the latest punk fashions—spiked hair, ripped jeans, and studded chokers—he almost presents more of a threat to the staunchly Bronx tribe than the Son of Sam himself.
And therein lies the tragedy—the damning feedback loop—of the story: senseless killings spurring further senseless behaviours between family, friends, and community members who should be supportive of each other; who usually are fiercely supportive of each other. Lee reveals the fiercely supportive type to also foster a diametric fierceness, an animal backed into a corner-sort of enmity that lets white-hot emotion poison one’s humanity. But there’s more to Summer of Sam than a “hurt people hurt people” throughline; Lee also examines sexuality, and how a spike in mass hysteria during the height of the sexual revolution culminated in varying degrees of collapse.
For much of the film, we don’t follow murder-mystery plot mechanics, but the intimate, everyday struggles of frustrated people living with a danger that exists primarily in their imaginations. This is maybe why the film performed poorly on release: audiences wanted a gripping serial killer thriller, and instead received extended scenes of Vinny failing to perform sexually with his wife. But with so much putting us on edge—news of ICE agents snatching people off the street, for example—Lee’s work strikes one today as incredibly prescient, as well as affecting, because the turmoil that most of us face isn’t a man with a gun standing in front of us; it’s our own voices sounding doom in our heads—like the Son of Sam in Lee’s film: an angry, babbling voice whipping itself into a frenzy, mad at the world but more so at itself. None of us are the pictures of strength and resolve that we try to exude.