Signaling Batman and “Calling Dick Tracy”: Noir in Comic Book Movies

When a person thinks of comic book movies, the typical image associated with the genre is that of superheroes fighting against supervillains in urban cities or other worlds either colorfully bright or intensely dark. While superheroes give comic book films their identity, some movies in the genre use styles and character archetypes that are remarkably reminiscent of classic film noirs. Some films are classic crime detective stories like Dick Tracy, while others involve anti-heroes and vigilantes taking the law into their own hands, like Batman. The type of noir found in these comic-book movies is Noir lite. James Naremore defines the style as "high production values, and straightforward comic-book heroic are mingled with over-the-top performances, double-entendre dialogue, dystopian satire, and a good deal of directorial self- consciousness." As over-the-top and otherworldly as these films appear, what sort of relations do they have with the noir style, and how does noir fit well within the comic book film genre? 

Although there is no one answer to the question of how films qualify as noirs, there are distinct features in the category's aesthetics and mise en scène that are more heavily emphasized than usual. In multiple Batman films, Gotham City usually has heavy shadows and low-key lighting to create a city full of danger, corruption, and poverty, making it a character itself. Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight films give the city a realistic and modern approach as if it were an episode of Law & Order just with a superhero. In terms of live-action Batman films, the ones that come closer to the noir style are Tim Burton’s films, especially the first film Batman. 

Gotham City feasts upon the noir style. In daylight, the city looks cold and gloomy from its faded colors, the shimmer of light, and streets covered in filth. At night, the city is practically consumed by darkness, smog, and shadows, where the light source comes from worn-out neon-lit signs, streetlights, car lights, and cryptically lit buildings lacking any color. The dark slum city makes for a perfect environment for Batman to blend into the shadows and for his rival, the Joker, to stand out among the crowd for his bright and festive appearance (sometimes aided by music sung by Prince). In the earlier scenes of the film, many criminals and corrupt officials wear trench coats and fedora hats when dealing in alleyways or fighting against the police in a smoke-polluted factory. What further gives Gotham City its unique noir flair is its German Expressionism influence. Some of the greatest film noirs were directed by German filmmakers, including Fritz Lang, who brought their expressionistic style to western audiences through crime films. Gotham has similar visual designs to the film Scarlett Street. However, it also has a futuristic gothic look like Metropolis (1927) with multiple factories and unusually designed buildings tightly close together with sharp edges. Tim Burton would play with the expressionist style for Gotham City more in Batman Returns (1992), only to have it look like a nightmare resembling The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), rather than having the classic visual noir edge from the earlier film. 

Despite the hero dressing up as a bat with gadgets, and the villain in clown makeup, most of the film’s environments are similar to the classic noir style. The plot and characters in Dick Tracy meet the standard noir tropes, but the overall look for the film is more unconventional than Burton's noir imagery in Batman. The film takes place in an urban city, has heavy shadows and creatively odd angles establishing an uncomforting environment, and most characters are dressed in classic tough-guy attire. Yet, as familiar as it all appears, the use of bright heavy comic book colors and designs strangely compliments the noir imagery. Sometimes the formation of light reflected within the city, or inside a building would cast shadows that looked like a painting in classic noirs. In Dick Tracy, there are literal distinguished matte paintings in plenty of scenes further highlighting the city as a weirdly unpredictable place of danger and dread. Film noirs notably had unconvincing rear projector effects (even for the time) for people driving in cars, while Dick Tracy goes "cheaper" by having a single-colored background with no sign of civilization. When buildings appear through a window, it would have the city painted in one color, looking like a painting on a wall or a cardboard cutout as opposed to appearing realistic. 

The strangest part of the film's visual design is how the distinctly odd-looking characters phase no one. The gangsters Tracy fights all look like people from an old carnival freak show. Hardly any of them look like the common crooks that would appear in film noirs, for having a giant head with a tiny face, a flat-shaped head, a wrinkly old face resembling Freddy Kreuger's, huge lips and chins, and so on. What is even stranger about the characters’ appearance are the wardrobe colors. The gangsters wear clothing as big and bright as a suit the Joker would wear, while Dick Tracy wears a bright yellow coat and hat when he should be wearing darker clothing when sneaking around. No character acknowledges anyone's appearance unless they have no face, viewing it as the norm. As bizarre as Tracy's world appears and as unconvincing as the effects look, they contribute to a unique style unlike other comic book films and film noirs. Film noirs like Detour looked fake yet had an excessive style resembling a person's haunted memories with a grounded story. As many like to think back to classic black-and-white film noirs, there were a few exceptions shot in color, such as Leave Her to Heaven, for example. Dick Tracy is a combination of the styles for those films just made to look like a comic book with a conventional crime story in an exaggerated world that mostly plays itself as seriously as other film noirs. 

The character of Dick Tracy is the typical detective who goes after the criminal underworld, with corrupted superiors holding him back. Tracy's personality is as hardboiled as that of a character like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, who is rough and tough when facing criminals. But Tracy's actions are more in common with Leonard Diamond in The Big Combo. Both are protagonists with similar goals and a determination to place a powerful crime boss behind bars and each eventually finds interest in his rival's lover despite already having a girlfriend. In both films, each character has the criminals in his clutches a few times (before the climax), while at other times, he is at the mercy of his foe. Tracy, at one point, gets framed for murder by a mysterious antagonist leading to his arrest, like the victim and protagonist in the noir thriller Stranger on the Third Floor. Part of what makes Dick Tracy clever and yet unappreciated by audiences, is how the character and storyline are a homage to many noir tropes, just set within a comic book world capturing the film noir style. The movie is familiar in many ways, except hardly anything about it feels fresh and new outside of its visual appeal. 

Tracy is a conventional by the number's noir protagonist, while Batman is subtler. It is not to say people were unaware of Batman's detective skills or that no dark comics starring the caped crusader came out before or during the release of Burton's Batman film. However, before the Burton film, Batman was portrayed as a campy superhero in film and television media. In the 89 movie, Batman looks as intimidating as a noir protagonist if they were to dress up like a Batman. Like Tracy and Diamond, Batman is obsessed with cracking down on the Joker's criminal organization, except Batman is portrayed as more than just a heroic protagonist who wants to clean the streets from crime. 

Batman is the superhero equivalent of characters like Frank Bigelow in D.O.A. and Dave Bannion from The Big Heat, protagonists who are tormented or doomed souls fueled by revenge after losing something or someone important to them at the hands of criminals. Batman witnesses his parents murdered by a criminal as a small boy, traumatizing him to eventually become a vigilante, much as Sergeant Bannion goes rogue after a criminal kills his wife. Bigelow is a doomed protagonist who is slowly dying when seeking vengeance, whereas Batman mentally feels dead on the inside. Without the mask, Batman lives a public life as a wealthy millionaire, throwing parties and doing business with other Gotham officials. While active, he is quiet, hardly socializes, and usually keeps to himself in his giant dark mansion with his butler Alfred. His public figure Bruce Wayne is his mask, Batman is who he really is when no one else is around, or a costume in which to hide while intimidating other criminals. And unlike many versions of Batman that follow (unless it was a lazy loophole), this version of the character has the urge to kill, a ideology that is sacrilegious for die-hard fans, but in this version is not out of place due to how he isolates himself and dresses as a bat to take out his trauma by hurting and traumatizing other criminals. At the start of the film's third act, Batman's revenge is further provoked when he finds out the Joker is the person who killed his parents. And even after killing the Joker, Batman is unsatisfied. He keeps himself distant from social gatherings in Gotham and fights more criminals because his mental state and skills have led him to a position where he is the only one to bring justice to Gotham efficiently. 

Catwoman is one of the few familiar noir elements in the sequel, making her the film's femme fatale. Elizabeth Cowie, in her article Film Noir and Women, believes "women may also fall victim to their involvement with the underworld, in an equivalent to the male criminal 'tough guy' thriller, using their beauty of course, but also and necessarily their intellectual talents for deceit." Before becoming Catwoman, Selina, like many femme fatales, including Susan from The Big Combo and Debbie in The Big Heat, was never directly involved in her boss' schemes. When stepping out of line, these characters would get either slapped in the face or brutally maimed by a hot pot of coffee. Unlike the others, Selina had no idea that her boss had a criminal plot, and after finding out, she gets pushed out the window, surviving the fall only to find herself psychologically damaged. Debby would seek revenge on her ex-boyfriend for the pain and scarring (physically and emotionally) he had brought to her. Catwoman would eventually do the same to her boss for similar reasons after constantly fighting against Batman, who gets in her way. Catwoman uses her beauty to let Batman's guard down before hitting or stabbing him with her claws. Catwoman would use sex appeal when encountering her boss under her Selina Kyle alter-ego, attracting him emotionally while using her wits to make up a story of having amnesia so that she can still walk around in public without the costume. Without using her attractive appearance, Catwoman convinces the Penguin that killing Batman will not be as efficient as framing him as a criminal, a popular noir trope, except it hardly goes anywhere after the police chase him shortly after he is framed. 

A more traditional femme fatale, with some similarities to Catwoman, is the singer at the Club Ritz Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy. Breathless becomes a lover to the notorious Big Boy Caprice. Aware of Big Boy's criminal status and living off his benefits, at the cost of getting stripped as an individual now seen as an item he owns and will hit to put her in her place. Breathless finds attraction towards the only man who is openly willing to put Big Boy away, Dick Tracy, and seduces him every chance she gets for him to abandon the woman he dates. Tracy finds interest in Breathless but cannot leave the woman he loves. Sometimes her flirtation gets Tracy to kiss her, but when using her body does not work, she uses Tracy's obsession with catching Big Boy to lure him closer. Breathless achieves it by leading Tracy to an important meeting and refusing to testify against Big Boy unless Tracy commits to her instead of just protecting her. 

In the end, Breathless is revealed to have an alter-ego as a gangster with no face credited as the Blank. Under her Blank disguise she goes after Big Boy Caprice, coming across as vengeful as Debby and Catwoman are against their abuser. But Breathless also plays an antagonistic role like Vera in Detour and Ellen in Leave Her to Heaven. In Detour, the doomed protagonist, Al, gets blackmailed by Vera over an accidental death he caused, while Tracy gets framed for murder at the hands of Breathless. Both women have different methods of turning against the main character; however, what makes them similar is that they are willing to turn them into the police if neither of them gets what they desire. Breathless is as hungry for Tracy's love, and affection as Ellen was for Richard, with the twisted mindset that if she cannot have him, nobody will, therefore taking great lengths to achieve it. 

It is no surprise that a comic book film differs from the classic noir style, but as evidenced in Tim Burton's Batman films, and Dick Tracy, noir elements can still clash with the genre. Gotham City resembles noir visually, where Batman and The Joker are what give the film its comic book feel. The visuals in Dick Tracy look like an old-fashioned comic book, but it also has a story and characters that are purely forties and fifties noir, just with make-up and costumes as exaggerated as the backgrounds. The doomed vengeful noir protagonist is reflected through Batman, while Dick Tracy is a hardboiled authority figure achieving justice. And the female characters that attract the protagonists are seductive, cunning, and determined to get what they want, like many other great femme fatales. The difference is that one dresses up as a cat, and the other wears a faceless mask which is revealed to be the femme fatale in the twist, making everything come full circle to Breathless' character. Batman and Dick Tracy, while not the first, were the steppingstones for film noir in comic-book movies. Dick Tracy, while mostly forgotten, was praised by critics for having a unique visual style blending comic book and noir appearing fake yet beautifully stylized at the same time. Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez would adapt Sin City similarly to Dick Tracy by having a phony but visually appealing comic book environment in a crime-driven city. The notable differences are that Sin City is harsher in tone and only uses bright colors when needed in a mostly black-and-white film. The popularity and style of Burton's Batman not only revealed a darker film version of the character that intrigued audiences far more, but the nineties animated series, and Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, would incorporate film noir elements as well. Even the recent Batman film pays tribute to the noir style, further proving that film noir is still relevant if not shown often in comic book cinema today.

Coonskin and Bamboozled: Clever Racial Satires, or Tasteless Offensive Madness?

Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin and Spike Lee's Bamboozled were heavy-hitting satirical films about racism that received mixed reactions among audiences and critics when they came out. Over time both films have gained a cult following for their political relevance presented through their themes and off-the walls violent, and offensive racist imagery. However, while many articles, video essays, and books highlight films making a statement about racism through comedy, whether it is a parody like Blazing Saddles or a drama with dark humor like Do the Right Thing, Coonskin and Bamboozled do not receive the same attention. Why should they deserve more attention, and what do they share outside of their divided reception?

By looking at the promotional material before seeing the films, Bakshi and Lee make it clear they are not wearing any kid gloves when satirizing racist material. Whether it is the image of a cartoon bunny in Blackface pointing a gun, or people in Blackface, there is no doubt that the material in either film will be hard to watch. A big part of what both films satirize is the racial stereotypes carried through the film and television media. However, each film criticizes Black racial stereotypes through different genres of entertainment. 

As an animator previously releasing insane adult-rated cartoons such as Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic, it is only natural that Bakshi mocks the stereotypes of African Americans in cartoons and comics in his latest animated film. All the Black racist stereotypes appear on the screen without any form of subtly, including the coon, the mammy, the Tom, the pimp, the loudmouth preacher, and the slave. Many of these caricatures have big lips, clothes either too baggy or flashy and speak in an exaggerated dialect of how white audiences think how they talk.

The trio of main characters, while designed as racially insensitive as the supporting characters, are not human; they are animals referred to as Brother Rabbit, Preacher Fox, and Brother Bear. This choice is to poke fun at Disney's controversial film Song of the South. The film has received praise for its seamless blend of live-action and animation, hit song Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah, and having the first Black man receiving an Oscar (even if it was an honorary award). However, what caused the film to become a massive blemish in Disney's filmography is more than its racial stereotypes when translating the African American folk tales of Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, and Br'er to the screen. Most of the film is told from the point of view of a wealthy white kid staying on a plantation as he hears the stories of Br'er Rabbit from a former slave Uncle Remus. The film disconnects itself from any politics relating to slavery, painting the south as a paradise where the rich white people relaxed in big mansions while the Black people worked and lived in small shacks. The refusal to acknowledge essential politics when the film is set topped with its racial stereotypes created outrage, eventually causing Disney to pull it from circulation for home media releases. Bakshi satirizes the controversial film through a modern setting in Harlem by not only presenting the stereotypes of the past and present but does not tiptoe around the politics involving the suffering of Black people like in the Disney film. Bakshi also does highlight the harmful stereotypes of Italians, gay people, rednecks, and (for one moment) Jews, but the focus of racial satire in animation remains on African Americans. 

Spike Lee does address the racist depictions of Black people in cartoons at the end of Bamboozled and with some bits of computer-generated imagery throughout the movie, but his film focuses on the people physically performing in front of the camera as racial stereotypes of Black folk. The apparent target getting satirized is the concept of Blackface, and while the film would have white people in Blackface, the primary entertainers in Blackface for most of the film are not white. The actors in Blackface are African Americans, which to modern white audiences may sound odd. However, the reality is that some Black actors during old Hollywood, and minstrel shows (most notably Bert Williams) were required to darken up their skin for not appearing dark enough. Lee's primary goal of using Blackface is to comment on the demeaning roles Black entertainers would play throughout history to make white audiences laugh, in Blackface or not, and its relevance in modern media. 

The opening prologue to Coonskin functions similarly to Spike Lee's overall themes of racial satire in his film. With little word of warning or build-up, the first image has two Black caricatures hanging on the street, making jokes and one moving as exaggerated as actors would on minstrel shows. Just as Spike Lee achieves satire in his themes of media's racial stereotyping through African America actors, Coonskin uses Black actors to voice the animated minstrel like-characters. The designs for these two black men are tasteless, but the dialogue and performances are not played out for white audiences to laugh at them. Both characters directly curse at the viewer and joke about the statistics (at the time) of white people committing suicide at the Golden Gate bridge and how only two were Black, and "one of them was pushed." The scene is concise, but it makes itself clear that the film is not designed to comfort any audience watching it. The opening credits sequence follows with live-action footage of Scatman Crothers passionately singing and scatting a song that sounds as upbeat as Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah but lyrically is not cheerful. Crothers sings about the racial slurs Black people have been called, how they have been oppressed, and their stereotypical roles in American white society as servers or entertainers. 

The lyric "Watch me dance," is Crothers' response when labeled under the infamous N-word, foreshadowing the actions the tap dancer Manray would have with audiences referring to him through the racial slur in Bamboozled. Unlike how Coonskin immediately gets to its repulsive imagery, Bamboozled builds to it slowly. Before getting a job working in a modern minstrel show, Manray and his manager Womack were homeless. Their only way to receive cash to eat was by dancing on the street through their tips. The opportunity to make plenty of money by performing for wider audiences seemed like a dream come true. It is not until Manray and Womack realize that their fame would come with a high price after discovering the minstrel concept of the show they are signing up for. The two would not just wear Blackface to appear darker but play dimwitted lazy slaves working on a watermelon patch under the names of Mantan and Sleep n' Eat (named after black entertainers Mantan Moreland and Willie Best). Both characters' situation reflects how many other Black actors were suffering in showbiz. With the entertainment industry primarily run by bigoted white men, Black people did not receive as many opportunities. They were typically only allowed to play buffoons, savages, or servants. If a Black entertainer did not want to play any of those roles, they would have little to no work; it was either get paid to play into the black stereotypes or go broke and hungry. Hence why stars like Bert Willaims, Mantan Moreland, Willie Best, and notably Hattie MacDaniel had to play the roles, they were given. 

Coonskin's way of telling a story is more out of the ordinary. At first, the film takes a familiar approach by having the movie start in live action after the prologue to launching into animation when the prisoner Randy hears a tale from his cellmate Pappy as they wait to make their escape. The transitions from live action to animation mirror the narrative structure from Song of the South, with Pappy serving as the foul-mouthed Uncle Remus, except most of the film is in animation. In contrast, the Disney film is presented in live action with four animated segments. The animated story in Coonskin has a clear beginning, middle, and end. However, it takes plenty of detours in the plot by creating a series of vignettes showing Black people living in America. Some of the vignettes in the film would focus on the poverty of Black people living in the slums or digging through trash cans.

Most of the shorts that take a break from the plot feature a character called Miss America, a tall, beautiful white prostitute dressed in red, white, and blue. Miss America's character represents the long and continuing history of oppression of the abuse African Americans have suffered in the U.S.A., as most of the shorts have her seduce Black men and abuse them. One short involves a Black man in rags singing and dancing to her as she sits down holding a guitar. To get rid of the man for good, Miss America casually calls for help claiming she is being raped, causing a noose to materialize and hang him despite committing no crime. While he hangs, Miss America sits down, playing guitar as gracefully as a hippie folk singer acting as if nothing happened. The only time Miss America ever shows support for African Americans is for selfish gain, which occurs whenever she meets the film's main characters. When Brother Bear becomes a champion boxer, she congratulates him for practically making a career out of beating up Black people to entertain typically white people. 

The idea of having a film depicting racism in an urban setting using scenes that can stand on their own is a method of storytelling Spike Lee would use for Do the Right Thing and even Bamboozled. During the show's televised premiere, the film's plot breaks for a few commercial parodies. One of the commercials satirizes the Tommy Hilfiger clothes brand. The last name Hilfiger now has the use of the N-word attached to Hil, as the white CEO himself, Timmi, surrounded by gangsta rappers and dancing Black women, promotes hood clothing to "keep it real." Timmi shows no restraint in using the N-word when promoting his clothing for his claims of coming from the hood. Timmi is not subtle about addressing poor people to buy his clothes to add his "multibillion-dollar corporation" for making it sound hip "to be broke" and "stay in the ghetto." The concept of the satire speaks for itself of how white-owned clothing brands tend to manipulate young African Americans to spend money on clothing that they claim to represent their culture. 

The commercial sequence is just as on the nose as the film's closing montage of clips showing how African Americans have been depicted throughout the media in various horrific ways. What makes it shockingly effective is the juxtaposition of calm music playing as the sequence shows one offensive image after another, reminding the viewer how this imagery was (and still is) seen by white audiences as inoffensive entertainment. The scene challenges the white viewer after the film's events to see if this imagery is still harmless to them. Even without seeing the film, the montage works just as effectively on its own by testing the viewer without them acknowledging it. 

Most of the film's vignettes are the minstrel show scenes. Outside of the scenes with the actors performing in Blackface, the film is shot on a mini digital camera giving the picture a low-quality look, as if the audience is watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary. The documentary-like look serves as a way for Lee to say these characters may not be real, but what is happening behind the scenes in the entertainment industry towards Black actors is not as far-fetched as you think. Some scenes are deliberately intended to appear in inferior quality, like the commercials. But the scenes with Manray and Womack performing in Blackface in front of a television audience are in high-depth cinematic quality. The difference in quality is to make it feel like the audience is watching an episode from the show, as each scene would have the characters tell jokes, sing, dance, and occasionally go on misadventures. Spike Lee makes it clear throughout the film how distasteful Blackface is through the characters' conversations and reactions to the imagery yet allows these scenes to drag. There are a few reasons why these scenes go on longer than they should. The clearest one is watching the two performers suffer as they smile on the outside yet are tortured inside for selling any dignity they had for money and fame. Another reason is to allow the film to present racial stereotypes to a modern generation to show how shocking and offensive they can be years later yet still be widely accepted by white audiences. The third and most intriguing reason is to study how minstrel shows have lasted so long. Dehumanizing African Americans was the essential draw for white audiences to confirm that what they see is how Black people are, but they were not viewed as cheap gimmicky entertainment. Actual talent was involved when creating and performing the minstrel shows. These were not just actors in Blackface that just stood there and told jokes; these were people that moved like cartoon characters (before the medium was invented) and could actually sing and dance, which Spike Lee captures. At one point, Lee briefly shows the demanding work that goes into the choreography in one scene. The downside is that all that effort is towards an art form at the expense of demeaning an entire race. 

The vignettes in Coonskin are short compared to Bamboozled. The scenes that Ralph Bakshi usually drags out are the death scenes. The antagonistic Black characters die quickly on-screen, whereas the white people running Harlem who oppress the community suffer greatly. One of them is the corrupt, crooked police officer Managan, who not only heavily despises African Americans but is a homophobe as well. A character who extorts money from criminals rather than arresting them, waves his gun around to scare away the Black residents of Harlem and violently abuses anyone Black or gay for the slightest thing they do. Rather than Brother Rabbit just drugging him and killing him while intoxicated, a stereotypical gay man takes advantage of him. Then Brother Rabbit has Managan painted in Blackface, throws him in a dress, and tossed outside the back of the club, where the police violently shoot him down. What is an extreme and abnormal way for a character to go is still an appropriate fitting demise in the film's animated realm. He dies resembling the people he hates in their unflattering depiction in entertainment and suffers the cruelest form of police brutality as countless loads of ammunition are unloaded on him, even after his dead body collapses. 

Police authority towards African Americans is criticized a few times in Bamboozled, at the very beginning when evicting homeless Black people staying in an abandoned apartment for the sake of it or arresting the only non-Black member after killing a gang of violent underground rappers called the Mau Mau's. However, the antagonistic authority figure is not a police officer but one of the heads of the TV studio, Thomas Dunwitty. Though Dunwitty is not as subtle as one of Spike Lee's famous antagonists, Sal from Do the Right Thing, his character is just as fascinating. Like the Tommy Hilfiger commercial satire, because Dunwitty grew up with African Americans and married a Black woman, he arrogantly thinks he is allowed to judge what is qualified as good entertainment representing people of color. Despite hiring a Black man, Pierre Delacroix, who understands what Black audiences want, Dunwitty rejects his show pitches that give a dignified portrayal of African Americans, believing he is only white-washing Black culture. But when Dunwitty is offered to produce a minstrel show, he excitingly greenlights it, thinking it is satire. In actuality, the show reinforces racial stereotypes rather than saying or implying anything negative about them in a comedic way. Of course, when saying the N-word in front of an uncomfortable Delacroix who calls him out on it but carries on, it is clear he does not care about people's feelings. Not because his racism is from pure hatred, but because he egotistically feels he has the right to speak for African Americans and talk in Black English Vernacular due to his background and his love for Black culture. Unlike Sal, who surrounds his business with pictures of Italians, Dumwitty surrounds himself with African art and photographs of Black celebrities. In Dunwitty's mind, he does not think he is racist, but his ego, actions, and lack of empathy toward African Americans prove otherwise. 

Both films unpack many racial topics in their unique way. Bakshi made an adult version of Song of the South that addresses the politics rather than ignoring it, while Lee gave a behind-the-scenes look at television and minstrel shows from the point of view of the Black people working the medium. For each film's direct approach of criticizing racial stereotypes and systemic racism through its unpleasant imagery made audiences more uncomfortable than laughing. Critics complained how Lee's attempt to make fun of Blackface was not funny, whereas people protested Coonskin before it was released for what it shows than says. But it was not the far from subtle racial imagery alone that made audiences split about these films.

Each film has a low-quality presentation. Coonskin's animation is rough and crude, hardly ever blending seamlessly with live action as Song of the South successfully did. When knowing that a famous filmmaker like Spike Lee, who has made popular, appealing cinematic films like Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, is now directing a movie that looks like an independent film he would make before his fame is underwhelming. The message in each film is present, but their execution is all over the map, ranging from in-your-face to subtle, derailing from the plot to show skits, and violence that appear randomly. When tackling so many different complex issues so quickly and strangely it is easy to get lost and confused by what the films are saying. 

These films are not for everybody for how offensive, cheap, violent, unconventional, and convoluted they are; however, all these reasons are a part of what makes them fascinating. There is a keen sense that the filmmakers made them out of passion for mocking and addressing racism in an uncomfortable way than most studios would. Whether a person is laughing or horrified by the films' mockery of stereotypes and politics, or both, the filmmakers have succeeded with what they are trying to accomplish. Neither film is polished, adding to the grittiness of what is still happening in society despite how obscene and over-the-top they appear. Both films unpack more than the average filmgoer would expect, and it is easy to miss many of their points and see certain bits as pointlessly random. Still, the various scenes and messages lead to more things to appreciate, acknowledge, and analyze upon rewatch value (if one has the stomach to see either one again), leading to a conversation about what the films are saying about racism in America, which is part of the goal that both filmmakers intend.