Race and Reappropriation: Spike Lee Meets Aaron Copland
2000; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 18; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3052582
ISSN1945-2349
Autores Tópico(s)Theater, Performance, and Music History
ResumoAt the beginning of He Got Game (1998), written and directed by Spike Lee, the credit sequence contains an unusual juxtaposition. In two consecutive title cards the American composer Aaron Copland (19001990) is credited with Music and the rap group Public Enemy is listed for Songs. These credits link a composer widely associated, perhaps inaccurately, with the American heartland to an urban, highly political rap group. A correspondingly diverse set of images appears behind the credits sequence. Usually in balletic slow motion, young Americans play basketball in a variety of locations, including pastoral landscapes in the Midwest and concrete playgrounds in the inner city. Behind the title card with Copland's name a young black man dribbles a ball along the Brooklyn Bridge, perhaps an acknowledgment that both Copland and Spike Lee grew up in Brooklyn and that they may have more in common than audiences expect. Throughout the credits sequence the audience hears the steel-driving clangor of Copland's John Henry. Although this composition is among Copland's more dissonant works, it has an appropriately portentous quality, not unlike the beginnings of many big-budget American films. Copland, in fact, specialized in the auspicious, often opening his compositions with grand gestures, even fanfares. He was also familiar with the conventions of film music. He wrote soundtrack music for
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