Culture and Imperialism

Pierre Delacroix, a Black TV writer, pitches a modern minstrel show as a deliberate insult to get fired, and the network loves it. It becomes a hit, and the satire spins out of his control. It was shot on digital video and is one of Lee's most uncomfortable films.

Why it’s here: The film turns the lens on who profits from caricature and who agrees to wear it. What's punk is that Lee refuses to make it comfortable: the audience laughing is the target. What's pedagogical is media literacy in its harshest form: how a joke becomes a product, and how the person making it stops being able to say no. It contains harsh imagery by design. Pairs with Sorry to Bother You and Network.

Ten years after a peaceful socialist revolution in the United States, women are still squeezed out of the new order: no jobs, no safety, no say. The film follows several women's networks, among them a women's army, a pirate radio station and a white feminist paper, as they build their own tactics. Lizzie Borden shot it in New York over several years on a tiny budget, mixing documentary style with fiction.

Why it’s here: A feminist sci-fi by a first-time director with almost no money that asks what happens to a revolution after it wins. What's punk is that it was made outside the system it describes. What's pedagogical is how it shows coalitions fracturing over race and class, and how media decides what counts as news. Pairs with Parable of the Sower and Sister Outsider.