Spike Lee has said that white people can’t make films with black people taking the main role. This is my opinion:

I feel like Spike Lee does make a valid point, however, personally I think that a person of any color can produce a film about anything, if they make sure that everything is historically accurate and non-offensive towards anyone. Everyone alive today has as much experience of the times that “Django Unchained” (A film Spike Lee refused to see because it was directed by a white person) as each other. Because no one was alive back then, that still is today. Spike Lee can’t say that black people are the only people who can make films about black people struggling, because he has as much experience as anyone else. This suggests that Spike Lee is trying to bring back segregation, as he is saying black and white people can’t mix. He’s also suggesting that he himself can’t make films with white people in, limiting his ability to cast actors who may be perfect for a role. 

However, there is another example of who can play what role in the BBC show ‘the elephant man’ in which, the main character is disabled. But that character is played by an abled body person, which has caused uproar among disabled actors who could have played that role. I think that this is wrong that an abled body actor played him, because someone who’s disabled in real life has felt the struggle that this character has. However, when it comes to Spike Lee, he hasn‘t been around when his ancestors were enslaved. If he wasn’t there during these events, he has as much experience as the rest of us. Someone like the Elephant man that’s around today, has the experience, and so they can really show it in their acting. That would also open the acting world to disabled people, meaning that many more jobs and dreams can be created for that demographic of people, which struggle to fund jobs, as even simple jobs like working in a shop are blocked off to some people because they don’t have disabled access.