Catching Jungle Fever: Exploring the Sociological Depths of Spike Lee’s Racial Jungle

Jungle Fever is an American drama film directed by Spike Lee starring Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra. It was Lee's fifth feature-length film, and mainly explores interracial relationships against the urban backdrop of the streets of New York City in the early 1990s. The film focuses on Snipes character, who is a married African American named Flipper who works as an architect in an architectural firm in New York, and Sciorra’s character, a single Italian women named Angie who is hired as his secretary. The two fall into an adulterous relationship, causing Flipper’s wife to throw him out of the house, and Angie to be ostracized from her family. The film follows their struggle, which eventually leads to both Angie and Flipper returning to their family.

The film, on the surface, appears to be a simple narrative of a star-crossed interracial lovers trying to stay together in a cruel and unforgiving world, but the depths that Lee dives into the social issues surrounding the romance is deeper than what is perceived in this two-hour film.

Diluted down to its four major components the thematic layers of Jungle Fever as a follows:

Motives behind Interracial Relationships

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Drugs and the Black family

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Treatment of Women

Each of these issues compliment the other, the first and most obvious being the interracial relationship between Flipper and Angie, then branching off into two major themes from their own races (drugs for Black communities, and Racism for white) which finally lead to the deepest layer which is the treatment of women in both communities.

I. The Motives, Pros and Cons of Interracial Relationships

As the title of the film suggest, the love affair that blossoms between Flipper and Angie is major conflict throughout the movie. From the beginning scenes of the film, audiences are introduced to Flipper as he ravishes his wife, played by Lonette McKee, showing that the two of a healthy marriage. He then wakes up his daughter Ming, played by Veronica Timbers, and walks her to her school in their neighborhood in Harlem. The scene shows Flipper as a successful family man, with a sexually healthy relationship with his wife, showing that whatever angst that plagues him does not come from his home, but somewhere else.

At work, Flipper is shown working hard, as his white partners joke and pal around his cubical. They bring in Angie, who they introduce as Snipe’s new temporary secretary, who is a white Italian woman even though Flipper had requested they hired an African American. Here is where the stress is Flipper’s life lies.  Though not happy with Angie’s hiring, Flipper sucks it up after confronting his bosses who claim that his claim is “reverse discrimination.” 

It is noteworthy to point out that out of Flipper’s two partners (Jerry and Leslie), Jerry shows far more distaste for Flipper, than Leslie. He is the one who quickly shoots down Flipper’s request for a new secretary, as well as his promotion later on in the film. He is a character who is quick to call Flipper out on his promotion, claiming that it’s his ego and that Flipper feels entitled to things due to the color of his skin. 

This shows the active racism that whites express, while on the other hand Leslie shows his racism in a far more subtle way. He attempts to be more diplomatic than Jerry and is the one who claims that they hired Angie because she is the “best human being for the job” and well as advises Flipper to be “patient” when he denied his promotion. By their names and features alone, it is assumable that both men are from Jewish decent, and therefore can lead to the assumption that Lee is playing on the racial tensions between Jewish Americans and African Americans. 

With this tension holding him back, Flipper is left in his situation, working in his tiny cubicle hoping for the promotion that, unknowingly, will never come. Though his wife tries to warn him of getting his hopes up, Flipper is confident that his hard work and effort will pay off, which it does, but not by landing him the promotion he so desperately desires.

Angie and Flipper work a late shift, Angie avoiding the dysfunctional home of her dependent Italian brothers and father, and Flipper to somehow prove to Jerry and Leslie the work ethnic they refuse to acknowledge. Both avoiding their stresses, they come together after only one late night together in the office.

How quickly Flipper and Angie fall into their adulterous relationship is an intriguing issue, as the two only spend one night together in the office before beginning their affair. Beforehand, they hardly exchange words. Lee had already established Flipper as a character who was in a sexually healthy relationship, so the motives for lust alone probably wouldn’t be enough to propel him to do something so against his established character. Even before he jumps into the pool of adultery, he tells Angie that he “never ever thought of cheating before” and knew it was a terrible thing to do. Yet, he does it anyway, though the next day he pretends that nothing has happened.

How Flipper and Angie take the late-night rendezvous is another interesting aspect to their relationship. Flipper doesn’t think of them as a couple, but tells his friend and confidant Cyrus (played by Spike Lee) that he cheated on his wife for “the first time.” The way Flipper phrases his confession to his friend is strange, as if he was talking about trying a new meal for the first time, or going to see a Broadway play for the first time. Using the phrase “for the first time” means that times following are expected, whether it be with Angie or someone else. 

After his confession of his white-lover, Flipper’s reasons behind it are, “I was curious - so I jumped on it.”  He then tries to explain that he’s still “down” to which Cyrus dismisses and explains why Flipper and Angie hooked-up so quickly. “The both of you got the fever,” he explains. “The both of you got jungle fever.”

On Angie’s side, as she tells her girlfriends about her affair with Flipper, they are much more against it than Cyrus. Unlike Cyrus who was more passive, and outwardly saying it was wrong morally and pointing out the “jungle fever” aspect, Angie’s friends are more disgusted. One of her friends saying it was “gross” and that she would never get with a black man, the other trying to be more tolerant, and instead bringing up that Angie’s father would be furious. Much like the Italian family in Do the Right Thing, there is a tension between the two ethnicities. The attitudes towards blacks that are shown with Angie friends mirror very much the attitudes of Jerry and Leslie, Flipper’s bosses. 

After the two are discovered, and both Flip and Angie are kicked out of their respective homes, their relationships is cemented. However, the dynamic of their romance does not do anything to push Flipper off the social ladder, and in effect make him more “white” but integrate Angie into the black community and make her more “black.”

Moving with Flipper to an apartment in Harlem, visiting his family, show Angie comforting into Flipper’s culture, lessening her social status. Flipper does not gain anything form his relationship with a white woman, other than the white woman. He doesn’t want anymore children (as he tells Angie towards the end of the movie), he doesn’t want marriage, and after not getting a promotion and quitting his job, he no longer can use her as a leg-up in a corporate world. He also doesn’t love Angie, as he makes clear to not only his wife, but to Angie herself. Meaning that unlike theories explored by Rajen Persaud, which predominately claims that black men love white woman as a means to become less white, Flipper’s attractions were solely from curiosity, and desire to nibble the forbidden fruit of the white woman. 

It is Angie, on the other hand, who sees Flipper as a way out. Living with him saves him from her unappreciative brothers and rage-fueled (to the point of abusive) father. At the core of this interracial romance is not love, or Flipper trying to escape being a black man (as he returns to his home and roots after leaving Angie) but Angie luring in Flipper, hoping for a way out.

II. Drugs and the Black Family

Below the layer of interracial romance, was a message about how drugs have destroyed the black 

family. Set in the 1990s, the height of the Crack Epidemic that was sweeping New York, drugs motivated some of the most powerful scenes in the film.

Flipper’s older brother, Gator (played by Samuel L. Jackson) is a reoccurring character of the film. A crack addict, he is often asking Flipper or their mother for money to feed his habit, while trying to avoid their father the Good Reverend Doctor (played by Ossie Davis). Gator represents the drug culture that is currently tearing the black community apart. In the scene where Flipper ventures into crack-infused areas that his brother lurks in hopes of returning their mother’s colored television. 

Here, viewers see the life that Flipper had rejected, unlike his older bother, to focus on his career, marry and raise a family. He sees familiar faces, most likely friends who had fallen into the same crowd as his brother, who greet him and tell him where his brother hides. This leads Flipper to a Crack house, called the Taj Mahal, filled with junkies (predominately black) and showing Flipper in his own personal hell, very reminiscent to Dante's Inferno.

Drugs weigh heavily on Flipper, as scene in a scene where he walks his daughter to school and a girl offers his sexual services for drug money, he quickly leaves the woman and angrily demands that Ming never, ever get into drugs. The ending scene of the film reflect this, as a young girl who looks like Ming turns the corner and offers him a similar service, causing Flipper to break emotionally and scream into the camera. 

In the white communities, drugs are an issue, as during a standoff in the candy store a fight erupts as one character calls out another for having a brother who is a heroin addict. Interestingly enough, Lee has the white people on heroin and the blacks on crack, showing that even in drug cultures the two are segregated.

III. Treatment of Women

Lee has often by accused of not having strong female characters in his films, a compliant that he has admitted to have needing to improve. Regardless of that, there are three main female character in Jungle Fever, who are mistreated by the men in their families.

First there’s Angie, who from the get-go is under-appreciated by her brother and father. Keeping the house clean, cooking, and spending her time making sure they’re all right is all Angie does before working as a secretary. She is wasting away in Bensonhurst, and as discussed earlier, quickly clings to Flipper as means to escape her life and be independent. After her romance is found out, Angie is beaten by her father, her brothers simply standing by cowardly instead of helping their sister, who had done so much for them already. Angie is taken out of her house by her girlfriends, who lead her to their house down the block, saving her from their abuse.

In a similar scene, after Flipper’s wife Dew learns of his affair, she kicks him out of the house by means of throwing his belongings out of their bedroom window, demanding that the locals take his things. After the scene, she sits with her girlfriends and they debate why black men love white women and the issue of what is considered attractive. Again, like Angie, it is not a man who has Dew’s back, as she cannot trust them because they’re “all dogs”, but women. 

The last major female character is Flipper and Gator’s mother, Lucinda, who is constantly trying to evangelize her crack-addict older son, and find the silver lining of her of younger son’s failed marriage. Completely at the beck-and-call of not just her sons, but her husband the Good Reverend Doctor, as well. During the final scene, when her husband shoots Gator to death in the groin, Lucinda is helplessly sobbing over her deceased son’s figure. Unlike Angie or Dew who had other females to pull her from her prison, all Lucinda has are her sons and spouse. Spending her entire life to take care of the men in her family, Lucinda was who Angie was in danger of becoming if she did not leave Bensonhurst. 

However, during the final scenes of the movie Angie returns to her home, her father allowing her into the house. The same for Dew, who allows Flipper back into her life, sobbing as he makes love to her. This illustrates the vicious cycle of these women, who save each other, only to allow the men in their lives to take control and break them down again.

Jungle Fever is a multilayered film that spends its two-hours trying to address many issues that plague not just African American life, but American life as a whole. Though it may spread itself out too far, spending more times on some things than others, its a multifaceted story with layers of content that are waiting, and willing, to be pulled back.

Beneath the Print: The Underlining Bias of Journalistic Writing

There is no such thing as completely objective-based journalism. While news outlets may attempt to cover a story and stay solely “to the facts,” humans are bias creatures. They base their opinions and views of the world on their own life, experiences and expectations. In journalism, the angle in which a story is covered by a reporter is where the bias brews, and eventually bubbles to the top. 

The three newspapers to be compared are the New York Amsterdam News, and two papers that many New Yorkers pride themselves in reading, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. All three papers re based and printed in the New York area, have each have rich and expansive history, and report on the news through their own filters.

A topic that all three papers recently covered was the story of how the New York Police Department was the secret surveilling Muslim students at college along the Northeast (including Baruch College). The issue was typically met with both side of political parties fighting with the other for either too or too little concerned with homeland security or personal privacy. 

In the Wall Street Journal article titled, “NJ Muslims, officials discuss NYPD surveillance” dated March 3, 2012, the outlet takes a simple approach. Using the barebones news from the Associated Press wire service, they inform the reader of the situation, and how lawmakers and the NYPD respond to the scandalous news. 

From the lead of article, it is evident what type of article it is with a line that reads, “Muslim leaders in New Jersey are meeting with officials to discuss the state's response to the New York Police Department's secret surveillance program.” The lead does what it is supposed to do, it explained the story without giving enough away to be any more informative than is necessary. However, it’s also vague enough to not point fingers at any of these “Muslim leaders” or “officials” which still leaves the reader ignorant, and forced to read more in hopes to learn more about the story.

However as the article continues, it does not add anything more. Later in the article is a line that reads, “Leaders representing a cross-section of New Jersey's diverse Muslim population participated in Saturday's session in the capital city.”  Still, the reader does not know who these leaders are, but simply that they are “diverse Muslim” leaders. There are no names or faces associated with these groups, and the only name the article mentions is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who have spoken out against the surveillance. It is not ironic that the figureheads of the article are those who appear to be the heroes who were unaware of the situation, but now against it.

The next article that grapples with the Muslim surveillance is from the New York Times and is titled, “Bloomberg Defends Police’s Monitoring of Muslim Students on Web” and was written by Al Baker and Kate Taylor and published on February 21, 2012. The article discusses how New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg responded to the surveillance, and unlike Christie who was against the program, Bloomberg fully supported it. 

Unlike the Wall Street Journal article which was barely half a page long, this article is extremely expansive and focuses on how Bloomberg’s views differ from Yale University’s president, Richard C. Levin, and between their views bouncing back-and-forth there are paragraphs explaining the reports and how the surveillance was conducted.  

The article’s view is mostly showing how the academics institutes felt about the surveillance compare to the police and government. It paints a picture for the colleges and universities involved, but does not give a face to the Muslim organizations who were being examined, or what it implies. The only line that comes close is in the first paragraph, where the article states that Bloomberg framed the effort as “one way to guard against the threat of terrorism.”

Unlike both publications prior, Amsterdam News’ point-of-view as rather clear halfway through its leading line. The first line reads, “The NYPD is in the hot seat over reports that confirm the department participated in widespread surveillance of innocent Muslim,” and is filled with various trigger words. The term “hot seat” is used and gives the impression of the police, who are usually the ones interrogating suspects, being the ones in the interrogation room, sitting under a lap, as society plays good-cop-bad-cop. The term “innocent Muslim” is also eye-catching, even though there were no charges pressed or suspicious activity found during the surveillance, it shows Muslims not as targets, but victims. The article even sites an instance where a City College Muslim group went on a whitewater rafting trip, and were spied on by an undercover agent.

The article also discussed Bloomberg’s support, much like the New York Times article had, but also has quotes from those of the Muslim community. Unlike the Wall Street Journal who vaguely referenced them, and the New York Times who dismissed them, the Amsterdam News shows the side and feeling of those whose privacy was intruded, and in effect humanizing them.

  This view is not something that was done in the case of the Muslim surveillance video, but in earlier editions as well. The front page story of the February 9 - February 15 issue of the Amsterdam News was titled, “NYPD kills again: Community outraged after police shoot unarmed man” - one does not even have to read the article to know what angle the article is covering. The article, written by Herb Boyd, focuses on the story of the shooting of Ramarley Graham, an 18-year-old man who was shot and killed in his Bronx apartment. The story discusses the protest which was held outside the 47th Precinct in the Bronx, where furious demonstrators chanted against Ramarley injustice, with such chants as "The NYPD is the KKK". The article sourced the story from the New York Times, who unsurprisingly had their own take on the protest.

The article titled, “A Raucous Protest Against a Police Killing” was published on February 6, 2012, and was written by Tim Stelloh. Unlike Amsterdam’s take, which showed demonstrated the hostility and rage that engulfed the Black community, the New York Times article showed the protest in a different light, calling it a “dramatic conclusion”  and instead of speaking of the shooting itself, discusses the Graham family’s heartbreak. Most interestingly, however, is that the article does mention the “NYPD KKK” posters and chants from the protest. Though, unlike the prior article which mentioned the stunning accusation at the beginning of the article, it is snuck at the end, and merely mentioned instead of elaborated. 

The last Amsterdam News article to be is discussed is titled, "Opponents to Bloomberg school closures plan to face off on Feb. 9” and was written by Nayaba Arinde in the February 2 - February 8 edition of the paper.  The article focuses on those against Bloomberg closing the schools such as teachers, parents, students, etc. The article starts with a quote from a technology teacher named Del Sledge, who encourages students to stand up in the face of adversity and fight against Bloomberg’s closure of their public schools. 

The quote by Seldge was taken during a hearing and used to set the tone of the article goes as follows, “A message that instills the idea of resiliency and helps children understand that just because you fall does not mean you stay down. Just because you meet adversity in life does not mean you claim defeat. Let them know that they count.”  

After the quote the article reads, “The countdown is on!”  That sentence is not a quote, but a line from Arinde’s article. Exclamation points are something most journalists should avoid unless they are writing a headline, or using a quote from a source. It shows an excitement, and that leads to the reader seeing a bit of bias in a the writer, and publications find that to be unprofessional. The Amsterdam News does not appear to feel that way, as the author of the article is the paper’s News Editor, and their feeling of support for the protest and well as distain towards Bloomberg’s wish to close school are fuel to a fiery piece. A fire that is not evident in the New York Times’ take on the story.

The article by the New York Times was published on February 10, 2012, and focused on Bloomberg’s decision to close 18 schools and eliminate the middle school grades at five others, citing the schools’ poor performances. The article is titled, “Amid Protesters’ Disruptions, City Board Votes to Close 18 Schools and Truncate 5” and an interesting aspect of the tile is the use of the word “disruptions” which has a negative connotation.  The protestors, who the News Editor at the Amsterdam News felt were so important as to use their quotes as a lead for a front page story, is demoted to mere disruptions in a New York Times article. 

Much like the Muslim article, the New York Times means of reporting is to show two side of an issue, and between each’s views give a bit of background on the issue at hand. Again, a completely different angle than the Amsterdam News, who obviously picked a side, supported their side, and rooted for their side to be victorious. While the New York Times may have dismissed the protest, an article on the subject by The Wall Street journal barely even mentioned it.

The Wall Street Journal published their article titled “NYC board votes to close 18 schools, shrink 5 more” on February 10, 2012, and was again, short, sweet and vague. The article took facts from the Associated Press, and described the protests that the Amsterdam News supported, and New York Times villainized as “the United Federation of Teachers and many parents oppose the strategy of closing failing schools.”  The article is a true barebones rundown of the story, without the reporting that is found in the New York Times article, and the energy behind the Amsterdam News article.

If there’s one thing journalism professors harp on to their students when it comes to writing news articles is the importance of being an objective journalist.  The belief that the only way to accurately cover a story is to not take any side, report the facts, and inform the reader accordingly. Publications like the Wall Street Journal take this belief to the extreme, and for stories that do not require in-depth reporting, rely on the Associated Press to provide them information and they simply publish the facts on their site. Even though they’re simply presenting the facts, they’re hands-off enough to show that they as a publication, do not enjoy rocking the boat and getting their hands involved in issues that may cause controversy. 

The New York Times shares this ideology, not wanting to take a side, but instead of giving almost too little information, they give so much information that all their bases are covered. Also, as seen in the Bronx Shooting article, they do not enjoy upsetting their readers and rather hide controversial aspects of a story within the story instead of making it any more of a focus than necessary.  This is also an angle, showing the irony beneath going so far to be  objective that the paper’s own objectivity becomes subjective.

The Amsterdam News kicks both ideologies to the curb, and instead prides itself as being “The New Black View” - its subjectivity is the paper’s slogan. The paper is not afraid to take on any issue, whether it be political, local, or international, as each article is filled with the  each writer and editor’s original point of view. None of these views hold back punches, and though the paper is labeled as a “tabloid” when compared to other publications it bring up issues like why some things are printed and others things not. 

News outlets who pride themselves as being “the most trusted” or “the most hard-hitting” are usually ones who are the quickest the hold back on stories. The problem with mainstream media is that in the United States, the media is run by a handful of companies who fund their publications, and have in effect made the newspaper business less about selling news and more about selling papers. The Amsterdam News does not have to worry about that, as an independent paper with a low price point and weekly publication, it does not have those financial woes, and if it does the paper’s quality and means of reporting does not reflect it. As mentioned earlier, there is no such thing as objective journalism, as every paper has a voice even when it tries to hide it, and the only way to understand the real goings-on in the world is to be aware of not just one, but every outlet.