BlacKKKlansman’s use of “sarcastic” cross-cutting

When a movie cuts between two similar-looking images, the purpose is often to draw your attention to the similarity between the images shown. For example, Cloud Atlas uses technique to great effect to show how all human struggle is connected. In this post I’ll talk about how Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansman uses this same technique “sarcastically” to dismantle any similarity you might have thought existed between two phrases in a particular context: “Black Power” and “White Power”. 

Towards the end of the movie, Lee cuts between two scenes: One of a group of black students listening to a recountation of the lynching of Jesse Washington by the KKK, and one of a group of Klan members watching The Birth of a Nation. The scene concludes with a cut between similar images. The Klan members gleefully give the Sig Heil salute while chanting “White Power”. This cuts directly to Harry Belafonte’s character concluding his account the lynching by saying “That’s why we’re here today in the name of black power”  which leads to the students chanting “Black Power” while giving the Black Power salute.

In a different context, cutting between these two images might imply a similarity between the two groups and the two chants, the implication being “I know that it’s bad for these white supremacists to chant ‘White Power’, so it must also be bad for these black people to chant ‘Black Power’”. That would be the typical use of this cinematic language of cross-cutting similar images. 

But Lee is using this cross-cutting language differently. Because we see what leads up to the two crowds’ respective chants, we can’t help but see that “White Power” is being used as an expression of hatred while “Black Power” is used as an expression of solidarity. The juxtaposition is “sarcastic” in that the cinematic “words” (similar imagery and cross-cutting) that are usually used to show similarity are instead used to show dissimilarity. 

There are logically rigorous ways to make the case that “Black Power” is not an equivalent expression of racial supremacy that “White Power” is in these circumstances. But Lee chooses to make this argument using the language of cinema. By intercutting between two chanting crowds, Lee uses similar images “sarcastically “ to show us that there is a world of difference between chanting “White Power” to express your hatred towards a group of people and chanting “Black Power” to express solidarity and resolve in the face of that hatred.