mo better? i don't think so

Alrighty. this week we take a long hard (hehe!) look at Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues.
I'll try not to repeat anything explored by Gabbard, but I'd like to talk to a few things he has to say. Before we get there, I'll talk a little about what I noticed about the movie.

Title
Mo' Better equals sex, somehow, in the dialogue (before we hear, "it's a dick thing"). So, we watched a film really titled Sex Blues, which makes a lotta sense right? About a little more than halfway through, i just blurted out "These poeple have a lot of sex!" and they do. After I was enlightened as to the real meaning of the title, the movie, and the sex, made more sense. In fact, this translation makes more sense that the title Gabbard tells us Lee originally wanted. The only place Lee’s title comes up is near the end with the quote, the quote that doesn’t really fit within the film at all.

Wordplay
I went back and forth trying to decide whether the dialogue was annoying or signified something more important. The first few scenes where Giant talks to the two guys outside the club that will later beat him up is a good example of at least three people talking at the same time, talking over each other, not really trying to be heard. It was annoying, and I could never understand what anyone was saying. It happened throughout the film.
In the scenes where the audience was allowed to clearly hear and understand the dialogue, usually those between Bleek and his lovers or between Bleek and Giant, it is full of wordplay. No one clearly communicates and says what he/she feels; for a simple “yes” or “no”, we hear anywhere from a few words to a few lines. And everyone does it. It’s not limited to a few characters who have this has a characteristic. We get lots of slang, street talk, stories, to give something as simple as an answer.
Under other circumstances, and maybe in a few scenes from this movie, I would say this is clearly some kind of encoding of signifying. But, I couldn’t clearly tell what was being encoded or signified. But, I guess that’s the point sometimes, right?
These instances did manage to draw attention to those moments when we could clearly understand the dialogue. In them, we hear repeated conversations on “ignorant black men”, various discussions on “love” and “lust”, how jazz is a black American art form but black Americans are not the ones listening to it, conversations about money, gambling, BASEBALL (Gabbard makes some good points about the presence of this American pastime in the film, but I say it existed outside the narrative completely and didn’t really serve any purpose other than saying yeah, black guys are interested in baseball too), etc.
Maybe it was just Lee’s poor ability to write a script, but we’ll talk about his contributions to the film next.

Poor Directing Skills
Wow, not good. In fact, really bad.
It was distracting. In one conversation, the camera actually panned across the room, back and forth, with no helpful interruptions each time a different person would talk. There were lots of slow motion moves; sometimes, people seemed to be floating down halls and toward groups of people- thinking moments. I get it. Oh, and the room spinning in the background. Classic. For what? Mostly, the directing was just distracting.

Misc.

Venue is no longer the smoky den of iniquity; it’s a class expensive joint.

French are still in love with jazz. In this film’s case, Lefty, a bandmember, has French girlfriend.

Okay, more creepy incestuous stuff. Spike Lee’s filming this right? Well, he’s filming his naked sister having sex. Ewww!

Everyone’s a type. Bookee is Hispanic. Club owners are Italian. Black urban boys. Any questions?

This in an impressive cast. Samuel L. Jackson, Wesley Snipes, Denzel Washington, the detective from Sister Act. Did everyone have to do some hard time in a Spike Lee film when they were young? This guy had to have some credentials in the community.

GAbbard
I can buy that the trumpet is a phallic extension of the self in the film. Hell, Bleek keeps his trumpet in bed with him while he has sex, and he undresses a chick with his trumpet. But, Gabbard didn’t have a lot of important things to say outside of what Adorno already proposed.

See all of you Tuesday, six sharp.