Thanks for reading the review and for responding to it. I’m glad you liked the film, too. It wasn’t until after I saw the film, and read A.O. Scott’s New York Times review that I realized the opening scene was from Gone with the Wind. (I’m not certain 1. That I’ve ever watched it in its entirety and, if I have 2. That it’s the kind of film that I would personally retain anything from for any reason.) Scott certainly didn’t include this level of detail though. It makes me think — especially after a second viewing of Black KkKlansman this weekend — that Spike was likely doing at least one very smart thing and possibly two. The first is foreshadowing Connie’s selfish investment in white supremacist patriarchy using an example from cinema that is not created or characterized by him but rather is self-explanatory as an artifact of entertainment history; given what you’ve said, there’s a lot to unpack but most explicitly, knowing she’s horrible and everyone else knows it, too, is helpful here because that makes it even more clear that Connie and Scarlett are certainly related. The second is a little less likely but not entirely because I do believe that Spike is a genius and in the brilliance of this particular film to use history in the service of his specific narrative powers. But given the ending, I believe he is also showing us the full range of destruction possible for white supremacy. Heather Heyer, it seems to me, is the face of a white woman who could not be more different than Scarlett or Connie, but the cruelty of racism is that it destroys even those who are not “supposed” to be hurt by it, by those who are supposed to benefit from it. It’s so toxic that it destroys even those who are adjacent to it by actively working against it, and this to me, is what is so heavy, and maybe, really difficult for some viewers to understand, to really see or make connections around. The presiding sentiment seems to be that Black people complain about racism because it’s harmful to us. This symmetry reminds us that racism also harms white women and others — and in our culture, there’s a way that white women stand in for the universal other in ways that other people do not and cannot. The unspoken reality of that is, if white women are not safe from the consequences of racism, no one is.
