Adapting BlacKkKlansman: "Based upon some fo' real, fo' real sh*t"

This article analyzes the political subtext of BlacKkKlansman (dir. Spike Lee, 2018) through a narratological and semiotic approach that calls attention to changes in the adapted source text. The film bears Spike Lee's idiosyncratic signature both visually and ideologically, including the use of implicit references to his earlier Do the Right Thing (1989), which position Ron Stallworth as a variation on the character of Mookie. Lee's 2018 film belongs to an art of resistance that invents a new cinematic form by revising the codes of the popular buddy film genre with humor. BlacKkKlansman immerses the viewer in a culture of whiteness rooted in the distorted memories of the Civil War—as indicated by the opening extract from Gone With the Wind (dir. Victor Fleming, 1939) and the embedded excerpts from The Birth of a Nation (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1915)—and entertained by the Klan's mythology, all of which produces real trouble as shown in the final sequence. The interweaving of fact and fiction that characterizes Lee's cinematic style enhances the idea that white supremacy is a fictional construction with real consequences.