Spike Lee’s latest film, about a black detective infiltrating the Klan, once again raises the issue of how seriously cinema should take the white supremacist group
The movies have never quite been sure how seriously to take the Ku Klux Klan. Is it a terrorist organisation, or a glorified frat society for resentful losers who like dressing up in silly costumes? Over the decades, cinema has given us both versions, and a few more besides.
Incredible as its truth-based story is, Spike Lee’s latest joint BlacKkKlansman is not the first time an African American has infiltrated the KKK in the movies. In Ted V Mikels’s 1966 trashsploitationer The Black Klansman (AKA I Cross the Colour Line), a light-skinned black jazz musician goes undercover to bring down Alabama racists (although technically the hero is played by a white actor, Richard Gilden). In 1974, OJ Simpson donned the pointy hood to mete out revenge in The Klansman; while Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder also gatecrash the baddies’ gang in Mel Brooks’s satirical western Blazing Saddles.
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