Film Notes: School Daze
Hyperreal Film Club will be presenting Film Daze at the State Theatre on June 9. Tickets here.
“They change people. You won't be the same. People change for the worse after they pledge. If I seen it once, I seen it a million times.” - Dap
Spike Lee has become a polarizing figure in film—he’s well aware of it, but in his early days one thing remained true: his craft as a filmmaker was impervious. Coming off the heels of 1986’s She’s Gotta Have It, Spike realized his next move was to make an ode to the Historically Black College and University. Filming at Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Clark Atlanta University, eventually, he was asked to stop production on their campuses because they felt he was portraying them in too much of a negative light. In their stead, Morris Brown College was happy to let him finish his film.
School Daze is a slice-of-life film about groups of students trying to make it through Homecoming weekend. While the stories of the film may seem like your basic college campus drama, the movie does an excellent job of weaving them into important topics in the Black community such as colorism, classism, politics, and underlying problems within Greek life. Written before She’s Gotta Have It with a different title and unable to find proper funding at the time, Lee returned to the project once he was finally let into Hollywood’s door. “This film was my four years at a black institution jam-packed into a weekend,” Lee remarked. He masterfully condenses a full college career into a tight two hours.
School Daze features a diverse cast of characters, a score and a musical number that’s just as poignant as it is catchy by Bill Lee, Spike’s father (Rest in Power), and even finds a way to Trojan Horse some heavy subjects to its audience without being “preachy.” The film rarely finds itself in conversations of the great college films or on the list of Spike Lee’s best movies, which is a shame. Lee's film showcases the underseen negative and positive aspects of the HBCU and the unique experiences that some Black Students go through, but despite what the real-life universities thought, it paints an even-handed picture of the school experience.
“I’m encouraging people to cut up. Stand up in the aisle, do Da Butt, sing, do a dialogue. Because anyone seeing this for the first time tonight is S.O.L (sh*t outta luck), I’m sorry. It’s going to be interactive but from an African American perspective,” Lee said when interviewed ahead of a 30th-anniversary screening of the film. The film is welcoming in that you come out, have a great time, and share the experience with us. If you’ve seen it in the past, have a ball; if you haven’t, come out and see something different and arguably not seen prior the film’s release.
“Wake up,” and don’t sleep on School Daze.
Blake Williams has a B.A. in Film and Television Production from Ball State University. He aspires to one day be a director, but until that day comes you can find him at a showing of whatever's playing that day or at home alphabetizing a shelf of movies and games and muttering about how he should "slow down on spending."