McGowan's decision to ignore the specificity of Lee's life and engage a rather theoretical, straightforwardly auteurist reading of Lee's oeuvre yields specific, fascinating readings of individual films.
Slant Magazine Spike Lee is an enlightening take on the numerous ways excess plays a significant role in the films of Spike Lee and serves as an alternative ... Read morelook into a complex filmmaker.
Film Matters In this invaluable study, Todd McGowan describes Spike Lee as a political theorist whose films always go 'too far.' In this way Lee vividly illustrates how we are defined as human subjects by what 'exceeds' us: the disturbing and often unconscious passions that break out in sexuality, violence, and the racism we disclaim. According to McGowan, far from considering this excess of being from a moralistic perspective, Lee uses each of his films to explore both its deadly consequences and its ambiguous role in driving the passions bound up in thought, emotion, and behavior. This book brings the kind of philosophical focus to Lee's work that has long been needed, without sacrificing close attention to the aesthetic elements and historical contexts of the films.
Susan White, Associate Professor of Film and Literature, University of Arizona This collection brings valuable attention to the largely overlooked experiences of Asian Americans in the southern US. . . . An important contribution to Asian American studies. Essential.
Choice Several of the films produced by 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks and directed by the prominent director Spike Lee are intricately analysed by Todd McGowan with poise, eloquence, and succinctness ending in a brilliant diegesis. From the start the author formulates for the reader the profound value the concept excess holds in crucially interpreting Spike Lee as not only an iconic political filmmaker but an artist committed to using excess as a unique peculiarity throughout his film repertoire.
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