Do we like Spike Lee?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decades of mentoring and backing other filmmakers, with one contested position on Palestine and a few old messes on the ledger.
Born in Atlanta in 1957, Lee grew up in a house of art and music: his father was a jazz bassist and composer, his mother taught art and Black literature. The family moved around before settling in New York, and he became the third generation of his family to attend Morehouse College, where he made his first film on a Super 8 camera.
The arc from there is a proper film-school fairytale. She's Gotta Have It (1986) was a low-budget surprise hit, Do the Right Thing (1989) earned him an Oscar nomination for its screenplay, and he has kept going with Malcolm X, the documentary 4 Little Girls, BlacKkKlansman and, in 2025, a reunion with Denzel Washington on Highest 2 Lowest.
The big stoush of 2026 started at the NBA All-Star Game in February, when Lee sat courtside in a keffiyeh-pattern sweater and a bag with a Palestinian flag strap. Hollywood Reporter writer Steven Zeitchik said it “felt like an affront” to Israeli star Deni Avdija, while others backed the statement. Lee then said on Instagram that the clothes showed his concern for Palestinian children and civilians, that he didn't know Avdija was Israeli, and that it was not meant as hostility to Jewish people.
On the harm test, nothing turned up from him against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet. His loudest politics is going after Donald Trump: after the 2019 Oscars, Trump accused him of a “racist hit” on the president, and Lee brushed it off as an attempt to “change the narrative”. That's a fight with a politician, not a campaign against any group.
The mess-ups are real but small. In 2012 Lee retweeted the wrong address for a man at the centre of a famous shooting case, an elderly couple said it drove them from their home, and he apologised and settled. In 2016, union benefit plan trustees sued him and his companies, alleging nearly $45,000 in unpaid contributions; the report we read carries no response from Lee and no outcome.
In May he defended the Michael Jackson biopic in a CNN interview, saying the abuse allegations against Jackson fall outside a story that ends in 1988. Critics who wanted them in the film won't be swayed, but he was talking about the film's timeline, not dismissing anyone.