School Daze (1988) and Higher Learning (1995). Both are about life on an American college campus. Daze uses the HBCU setting, and Learning uses a traditional "state school" sort of campus.
The link between the two films is Laurence Fishburne. In Daze, he plays a student activist named Dap. This character wants the university to devest from South Africa. In Learning, he plays Professor Phipps, a seemingly humorless Political Science teacher who is eager to teach his students harsh life lessons.
Fishburne plays Phipps with an accent, but we never learn anything about this character. Where's he from? Where did he go to school? Why is he always on campus during crucial moments? The guy doesn't seem to have any sort of life or existence off campus. And although the two films are only seven years apart, Professor Phipps doesn't come across as especially young. (Fishburne would have be 34 during filming, which would be a little on the young side for a full professor. And yet, by his somewhat cavalier actions in the classroom, you'd certainly be right to think that he has full tenure.)
Anyway, all races are shown or mentioned in the film, but in the end, the white/black dynamic is really what Singleton homes in on. We have actual Nazi skinheads, and we see the way the campus security treats white students and black students. Even after a skinhead snipper kills Malik's (Omar Epps) girlfriend, when security comes upon Malik beating up the shooter, they pull Malik off of him and start beating Malik down, allowing the shooter to wander off. Security does quickly go after the shooter, but they aren't trying to beat or shoot him. They're trying to rationalize and reason with him. I get the social commentary here, but I have to say that much of it comes off a little heavy handed.
Why go to the extreme of using Nazi skinheads? Yes, they exist, but I would prefer regular stupid white people acting in regular stupid white people ways. Just show that. That's enough to make a point. Doing anything more somewhat defeats the point. Although, I have to admit, the thought did enter my head: Isn't that cute? In the 1990s, you could easily identify the racists by their bald heads, their Hitler memorabilia, and so forth. Back then, it wasn't cool or even socially acceptable to be racist. If you were racist like that, you kept to yourself and your small group of mentally disturbed white men.
These days... well... let's keep the focus on the movie.
Fudge (Ice Cube) is an interesting character. He's a sixth-year senior, but he doesn't let people rib him about it. He's there to learn, and he learns on his own time. If he needs more time to learn, he's willing to take it. His apartment is full of books that he's read, and he's at first encouraged to hear that Malik wants to read Frederick Douglass but then discouraged to hear that Malik only wants to read him for an assignment. Real learning, Fudge tells Malik, is something you do for yourself. Professor Phipps teaches Malik a similar lesson. If life is a game -- and we do see Fudge and Malik playing Monopoly, which seems kind of odd in the scene, but makes perfect sense metaphorically -- you may be the pawn, but pawns can use knowledge to transform themselves into the most powerful piece on the board.
Malik is willing to work for it, and maybe that's the point. If Fudge and Phipps are mentors, they are teaching him more than he's learning in any classroom. You are in the game, they seem to tell him. You can't opt out. All you can do is position yourself. "Without struggle, there is no progress," Phillps tells Malik. "Frederick Douglass," Malik responds. Phillip looks at him with something approaching approval. Maybe Malik only read one book that academic year, but he fought to stay in college when it looked like he would be kicked out for financial aid reasons.
The ending shows him still running. But now he's running for himself. He has a lot left to unlearn, which is the word typed on the screen, first over the American flag, and then over a black screen. Knowing what to unlearn: that's real higher learning.
In a previous review, I noted that I prefer Spike Lee both as a storyteller and as a director, but in this head-to-head battle, I give the nod to Higher Learning over School Daze.
Rating: 3/5 stars
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