20 - Mixed-Genre and Cinematic Success in Chi-Raq

Thinking through the problem of mixed-genre in Spike Lee's 2015 film Chi-Raq, how it operates as a fragmented address to gun violence, and how that address clarifies our criteria for a successful cinematic work. In particular, I am interested in how the farcical story of a sex strike, the melodrama elements of storytelling, and quasi-documentary moments combine to instruct morally and politically. That instruction, I argue, is an extension of Lee's broad political values - embodied in the figure and film Malcolm X - around Black communities healing themselves rather than waiting for systemic change or changes in white people and white social-political structures.