Spike Lee is a well-known American director – some of his best known works include Malcolm X (1992) and BlacKkKlansman (2018). He has very strong opinions about representation on film. He says that for someone to create a film about black culture, it should be directed by a black person. Films like Detroit (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 2017) and Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2012) have been criticised by him, as the directors were white and he thought that they were misrepresenting black narratives.

I agree with Lee about this, as films about subjects like race can be very sensitive and hard to get right. A person who has lived the culture and lifestyle of black people would ultimately make a more accurate film that someone who has just researched this. Also, if a director doesn’t know a lot about the culture, they may resort to using stereotypical characters to show black experiences.

However, if a director does have a detailed knowledge of black lifestyle and on the topic that the film is about, then they could make an accurate film. Black people are one of the most under-represented groups on the big screen, so making a film about their lives should be respectful, and they should be correctly represented.