School Daze: The Whole History of My Life, Page 2

THE WHOLE HISTORY OF MY LIFE

marcus pinn

SCHOOL DAZE (page 2)

So anyway, when School Daze came on HBO, my aunt gathered my cousins and I into the living room to watch it. Throughout the film, my aunt would interject commentary schooling us on what a historically black college is and the history behind them. She even pointed out a few continuity errors. It sounds corny, but that's the kind of viewing experience I'd like to have with my own son or daughter some day. It was actually my Aunt Myrna who schooled me on the importance of my first name and who I was named after in the intro of School Daze: there's an image of Marcus Garvey, along with other famous black figures and civil rights leaders, shown during the film's opening. I was around 9 years old and the esteem of historically black colleges stuck with me as I grew up. While most of the guys in my junior high and high school wore UMass and Penn State triple bar baseball caps, I usually had a Howard University or Norfolk State hat on. "Where's Howard University?" or "What's Norfolk State?" my (mostly white) teachers and classmates would ask. I remember going on a black college tour my junior year of high school with two of my closest friends along with a bus full of other high school juniors from all over Western Massachusetts and it was the most fun I'd had at that point in my life.

But it was on that black college tour where I saw some of the issues a lot of these black schools are still facing today, which Lee touched on in School Daze. A lot of alumni don't give back to their Alma Maters after they graduate which often leaves them struggling for money (you certainly don't think the state has a historically black college in mind when it's time give out money do you?) I should know because I'm one of those people. I don't give back shit to Hampton University. On one hand, that's pretty sad. Here I was earlier in this write-up talking all this uplifting stuff about historically black colleges yet since I graduated I've done nothing to give back and support. But on the other hand, I had a disappointing experience overall so I feel I'm justified in severing all ties from my Alma Matter now that I've graduated (I'm aware of how selfish that sounds). In the 10 years since I've graduated, I've returned to Hampton University once. It's a sad paradox because some HBCU's don't have all the resources that other bigger schools do so they can’t always provide the right support for the student body. I'm aware that HBCU's try to work with what they have when they don't have all the resources, but at a certain point students have a right to get frustrated with the system.

Hampton University ended up being one of the only worthwhile colleges to accept me, but that's not to say I wasn't intrigued about the black college experience. My hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts isn't exactly the whitest place in the world but it's still predominantly white. Although all of my close friends growing up were of every different ethnicity and race you could think of, I still thought it would be cool to be around a campus full of black people for a change. I honestly had School Daze and A Different World in the back of my mind when making the decision to go to Hampton. Don't get me wrong, both showed the negative side that come along with black college life, but at the end of the day they made college seem like so much fun. And to a certain degree it was pretty accurate. There's a beautiful liveliness to historically black college campuses that you can't get anywhere else. I know this because I grew up in a college town and spent a decent amount of time on other college campuses throughout my life so far to make the comparison. All the colorful and exciting scenes in School Daze of the marching bands, pageants, parties and step competitions were pretty accurate as far as my experience. I loved all of that.

I know it sounds a little ridiculous to make a college decision based on a movie, but School Daze carried so much weight because it was so unique. There really was no other movie like it. And don't act like some of you who went to a historically black college didn't have School Daze or A Different World in the back of your head when you made the decision to go to Hampton, or Howard or Morehouse or whatever. So don't judge me.

If you read Part One of the Whole History of My Life then you got a glimpse in to my time as an architecture undergrad at Hampton University.* But as I said in that write-up, the architecture department was almost a separate entity unto itself. Campus life was something completely different. For the five years I attended Hampton University, I never felt completely comfortable no matter how much I enjoyed certain aspects of it.** But it wasn't as dramatic as I just made it sound. I had great friends and had my share of good times. But when I wasn't around my close friends or fellow architecture classmates, I always felt like an outsider. I had such anxiety walking through the campus at times because I just got a strange vibe like I didn't belong and didn't relate to the student body when I really wanted to. Hampton University has a somewhat notorious reputation for being "boushie," which I certainly wasn't and still am not. Shit, the last year I was in college I didn't even shave and I wore the same clothes all the time. I practically looked homeless. Does that sound boushie? I was also labeled with "sounding white" whenever I spoke. This wasn't anything new to me. I'd heard that before and still hear it today but it was on another level at Hampton. I'd been called everything from Carlton (Fresh Prince) to Al Roker. Hampton University's student body was international but a large chunk of its population were students from the south where people speak with drawls. For those of you that have never met me or heard me speak, I guess I do pronounce my words properly but I don't know how that correlates to sounding white. It used to bother me a little when other black people would say I sounded white, but now it doesn't bother me at all. Hey, I stand a better chance at making a good impression at a job interview with my "white" way of speaking.

I guess School Daze is kind of a musical. But not a 100% musical in the vein of The Wiz or Mary Poppins. I mean there's only like two musical numbers and one additional scene of the late great Phyllis Hymen singing. School Daze is also a drama/comedy/coming of age story about various black college archetypes. In the film we follow Dap (Laurence Fishburne), a militant senior involved in many pan-African student organizations on campus. His on-campus rival comes in the form of Julian (Giancarlo Esposito), leader of the Gamma Phi Gamma fraternity. Julian stands for everything that Dap hates: fraternities, elitism and just all around superficiality. And to make things worse, Dap's insecure cousin Half Pint (Spike Lee) is pledging Julian's fraternity, which makes for some inner-family tension. On the other side of the Mission College campus we a have another beef brewing between the mostly light-skin Gamma Ray sorority, led by Julian's girlfriend Jane, and the collective of non-superficial dark skin black women on campus, led by Dap's girlfriend Rachel. All of these characters are very real. I went to college with plenty of Daps, the well-meaning and intelligent yet still slightly misinformed and wet-behind-the-ears black militant who discovered Malcolm X literature and had that Che Guevara poster on his/her wall not realizing that the poster was probably made in a Chinese sweatshop. And every black university has that overzealous fraternity leader that Julian represents. And yes it's a touchy subject but there will always be a skin complexion issue between some black people like Spike Lee shows in the tension between the women on campus.

School Daze is an excellent film and went on to make a modest amount of money. It's also considered a modern classic among most black people within Generations X and Y. It marked the beginning of Spike Lee's working relationship with Samuel L. Jackson, Giancarlo Esposito, Ossie Davis and Bill Nun.*** For some strange reason, people used to always confuse Laurence Fishburne and Samuel L. Jackson with each other throughout the 90's. School Daze is the only film where the two actors appear on screen together at the same time.

But this film wasn't without its detractors. Some critics, all white, didn't really get the ethnic and cultural aspects of the film so they dismissed it as unrealistic or forced. Roger Ebert was one of few critics who understood it for the most part. That's not to say some black people didn't have an issue with School Daze as well. Some felt the film showed too much negativity within historically black colleges. Weeks into filming, Morehouse, where Spike Lee started to film School Daze, asked him to find another campus to shoot on because they didn’t want to be associated with a negative portrayal of black schools.

My one issue with School Daze is the ending. It kind of makes me cringe actually. In the final scene, a frustrated Dap runs through the Mission College campus yelling "Wake Up!" Suddenly the entire student body gathers outside in a moment of solidarity. Oh, I get it! Black folks need to wake up and do better! Ok. Power to the people. I know Spike Lee isn't one for subtlety but geez...

Of course the basic message behind that was true and still is today but did Spike Lee have to go about it in such a contrived way?

The whole Spike Lee/School Daze/decision to go to a black college thing came to a head for me in 2002. Spike Lee was coming to Hampton to speak! I couldn't wait. I remember standing in line at Ogden Hall, the auditorium where he'd be speaking. Then word got out that Spike wasn't coming! As it turned out, he got word that there were rumors that the president of Hampton University, Dr. Harvey, was a conservative Bush supporter so he pulled out at the last minute. "WHAT THE FUCK?!" I thought. "The man responsible for the movie that helped me to make my decision to go to Hampton isn't coming here? BULLSHIT!" Now that I'm older I see where Spike was coming from. What black person in their right mind could be a conservative under the Bush administration? Especially in his first term given the nonsense that went down with the polls in Florida in 2000. But to this day I still think it was somewhat of a bitch move on his part. There were thousands of young black people waiting to hear him speak and he let us down just to prove a point. I'm sure money that's been used to fund his films in the past has passed through conservative capitalist Bush-loving fingers at some point. Let's also not forget that Spike Lee, who was so against the war in Iraq, directed commercials for the military. But I'm sure those commercials Lee directed were never used as a way to get people (especially poor people and people of color) to sign up and join some branch of the military and eventually go off to Iraq.

I find it interesting that once Spike Lee pulled that little stunt, I started to dislike his work more and more. I mean, how could I not? In the last decade his filmography has been book-ended between She Hate Me (possibly one of the most offensive movies to portray lesbians) and Red Hook Summer (a movie where a mother knows her father molested a young boy years ago but still allows her young son to stay the summer with him...huh?!) Even though Spike is pretty much going through a midlife crisis as a filmmaker, making a studio film one minute then turning to Kickstarter right after, he still has his prolific period that started with She's Gotta Have It all the way up through Malcolm X and no one can take that from him. No matter how many shots and low blows I've taken at him in this write-up, he's still responsible for producing something that helped me to make a major decision in a my life that I don't regret at all.

* There's a cool minor connection between this write-up and Part One. Brian Dennehy, star of Belly of an Architect, would go on to co-star in Spike Lee's She Hate Me.

** An accredited architecture degree is a 5 year program.

*** After School Daze Spike Lee offered Larry/Laurence Fishburne the role of Radio Raheem but he turned it down.

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